Brett began a Pre-Raphaelite painter, and never forgot the technique he learned, but by 1870 his love of the sea had begun to dominate his subjects. In this picture, the dramatic sky of a departing squall has left rough water (a ‘seaway’) in which boats pass in opposite directions. Brett painted three pictures in 1871 on canvases this size and shape, a format he rarely employed. Two were certainly largely executed in Sicily, where he had gone, with members of The Royal Astronomical Society, to observe and record the total eclipse of the sun, which occurred on 22 December 1870. This picture, the third in this unusual format, must have been commissioned by George Bidder on Brett’s return to England, and painted in the spring or summer of 1871, before the artist left for Wales early in September. Bidder was an eminent QC, and probably met the artist because they were both Fellows of The Royal Astronomical Society. The composition draws on Brett’s detailed observations of the sea and boats in the Mediterranean over a number of years. 

Brett must have set great store by Yachts in a Seaway, since he chose it to represent him in the International Exhibition, at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in 1872. The Examiner referred to it as ‘one of Mr J. Brett’s most successful pictures’, while The Morning Post said: ‘Mr J. Brett has a charming picture, Yachts in a sea-way, Mediterranean, hung on the south-west staircase, which visitors should be careful not to miss.'

[Not in cat rais but catalogued by Charles Brett]