Dawn over Teignmouth [Teignmouth at Dawn] by Thomas Armstrong, before 1871. Oil on canvas; 12¼ x 21½ inches (31.2 x 54.5 cm). Collection of Torre Abbey Museum, accession no. A493.
This is a view over Teignmouth Harbour at dawn painted from Shaldon, the village on the opposite bank of the River Teign from Teignmouth. A solitary boat sits at anchor in the bay. Armstrong, like his friend Whistler, enjoyed painting the effects of light and shadow over water but this work is not nearly as abstract as Whistler's nocturnes although it captures a similar mood. This work is perhaps more reminiscent of Whistler's Crepuscule in Flesh Colour and Green: Valparaiso or Symphony in Grey and Green: The Ocean, both of 1866. In 1877 Armstrong exhibited another Teignmouth riverscape, The Harbour Bar at Teignmouth, at the first Grosvenor Gallery exhibition. The reviewer for The Architect recognised the influence of Whistler on this particular work: "Mr. Thomas Armstrong is, in his landscapes, the only avowed disciple of Mr. Whistler with whom we are acquainted. The Harbour-Bar at Teignmouth (68) is good, but the larger landscape, hung at the other side of the gallery, The Riviera of Genoa in Spring (69), is barely intelligible; we only guess at the effect of diffused blue light, where the luminosity of the fine air takes an effect of sombreness, which the artist has aimed at" (319).
Sidney Colvin recognized as early as 1871 Armstrong's potential as a landscape painter: "It should be added that some very truthful and feeling studies of South Devonshire scenery – milky or glass blue seas, and sands and cliffs of rosy or milky red – show in Mr. Armstrong a capacity for landscape which has not yet been employed in any of his finished compositions" (67). Dawn over Teignmouth makes us regret that Armstrong did not devote more attention to this branch of painting.
Bibliography
Colvin, Sidney. "English Painters of the Present Day. XXIII – Thomas Armstrong." The Portfolio II (1871): 65-67.
"The Grosvenor Gallery. –II." The Architect XVII (May 19, 1877): 319-320.
Created 19 March 2023