The Pool of London, by George Vicat Cole (1833-1893). 1888. Oil on canvas. H 195 x W 305.5 cm. Credit: Tate, via Art UK. Accession no. N01599; presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest, 1888. Image available to be shared and re-used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).
This is another of Vicat Cole's Thames series, and another subject popular with landscape and marine painters of the day, even as its romance was being undercut by the change from sail to steam. It is probably the most important of Vicat Coles's Thames paintings, long in gestation (his diary shows that he had been planning and sketching details for it since 1878) and grand both in conception and scale:
for the next nine years his sketch-books are full of pencil studies of shipping, rigging, and sails, showing that the subject still occupied his thoughts. In 1883 he began to paint it on a 7-foot canvas, but a brother Academician, coming into his studio at the time, expressed his opinion that the subject and design were too grand for the scale, and advised him to transfer it to a 12-foot canvas. When in 1887 he finally adopted it for his Academy picture, he decided on 10 feet by 6 feet as its dimensions. [Chignell III: 125]
In her own introduction to Vicat Cole, Shirley Nicholson writes that the result
was not at all like the pastoral scenes the public associated with him and it caused a sensation when exhibited in 1888. It was selected for the Chantrey Bequest and the price, £2000, was the highest Cole ever received and was among the largest sums ever paid for a Chantrey purchase. Although there were criticisms, most notably from the Athenaeum who dismissed it as a work unworthy of patronage, many people, including Gladstone, were very impressed by this celebration of commerce on a grand scale.
Unfortunately, Chignell found that, at the time of writing, the painting was being kept in a temporary gallery in South Kensington, and was much in need of cleaning (III: 128); it is not on display at the Tate now, either, but is no doubt properly conserved.
Links to related material
- Shirley Nicholson's George Vicat Cole, RA (1833-1893): A Biographical Introduction
- W. J. Baker's The Pool of London
- Henry Pether’s The Custom House and Pool of London by Moonlight
- James Abbot McNeill Whistler’s The Pool
- A turn-of-the-century photograph of the Pool
Bibliography
The Pool of London. Art UK. Web. 1 October 2022.
Chignell, Robert. The Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole RA. Vol. III. 3 vols. London: Cassell, 1896. Internet Archive, digitised from copies in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 30 September 2022.
"The Royal Academy II: Landscapes and Marine Pictures." Art-Journal 1885. 225-226. Google Books. Free Ebook.
"George Vicat Cole: The Pool of London." Tate. 1 October 2022.
Created 30 September 2022