Charles Keene (1823-1891)
A Rough Passage
Watercolour; inscribed beneath the mount 'by Charles Keene' and, on the back, 'This picture was given by Charles Keene to Edward Plimpton'
Diameter 12 ¾ inches
£2,800
Provenance
Sven Bruntjen Collection
Literature
Charles Keene: 'the Artists' Artist' 1823-1891, no. 26
Although the Punch cartoonist Charles Keene worked mostly in monochrome, he occasionally painted ambitious pictures in watercolour. His work was greatly admired by artists as diverse as Millais, Degas, Menzel and Sickert. In 1860, Keene and his friend, the artist Henry Stacy Marks, chartered a Gravesend 'hatch boat' for a cruising holiday of the Medway and Thames estuaries, where they may have encountered the foul weather shown here, with the tiller lashed and the boat heeling over on a broad reach.