JOSEPH RICHARD BAGSHAWE R.B.A. 1870 – 1909
Joseph Bagshawe was the grandson of the marine artist William Clarkson Stanfield, and his father was Judge W.H.G. Bagshawe KC. He studied art under Hubert Vos in London and Van Hove in Bruges. He first visited Yorkshire in 1896 and established his permanent home and studio in the Old Rectory, Whitby in 1902. The previous year he had become the first secretary of the newly formed Staithes Art Club. He was fascinated by the sea and began a closer acquaintance with it by going out with fishermen and then buying a small yacht of his own which he would take out for as much as a fortnight at a time.. He also visited the coasts of Holland, Normandy, Finland and the West Coast of Ireland to paint.
He was able to depict the moods of the sea and the sky and the infinite variety of the effect of light on both. He experimented with painting shipping scenes in oils at night, but these tend to be his least collectable subjects, being so intensely dark and with so little variation of tone that they are very difficult to light and it is
almost impossible to find suitable places to hang them so that they can be viewed to good effect. Watercolours of dark, moody subjects work very well, however, perhaps helped by the transparency of the paint on white paper. In these he really captures the moods of the North Sea and its effects on its shores. His paintings and drawings of sailing craft were remarkably accurate. The continental influences on his work can be seen clearly, especially in his watercolours of fisherfolk, often painted very impressionistically using rapid, curving brushstrokes. His work is
often so intensely focussed on the main subject of his painting that it appears to burst out of the bounds of the canvas or paper. He wrote and illustrated articles for The Field and The Yachting and Boating Monthly which his son, Gerard Wilfred
Bagshawe , published as a collection in 1933. Joseph Richard Bagshawe died tragically early at the age of thirty-nine as a result of diabetes.
He exhibited at the Glasgow Institute, the Walker Gallery Liverpool, Manchester city Art Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists (to which he was elected a member in 1904) and the Royal Institute of Painters in Oils.
Examples of his work can be found in the Pannet Art Galley Whitby and the
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Bibliography:
Staithes Group Centenary Exhibition, Rosamund Jordan 2003
The Staithes Group, Peter Phillips, Phillips and Sons, Marlow1993
The Yorkshire Union of Artists 1888 – 1922, Dennis Child, Leeds Philosophical and
Literary Society Ltd, Leeds 2001
The Dictionary of British Artists 1880 – 1940, J. Johnson & A. Greutzner, Antique
Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge 1976
© Rosamund Jordan 2003
