Arthur Friedenson

Runswick Bay

1907

© The estate of Arthur Friedenson

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Not on display

Artist: Arthur Friedenson 1872–1955
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1025 × 1537 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1907
Reference: N02138

Display caption

Friedenson was born in Leeds and was initially apprenticed as a sign writer, before training as an artist in Paris and Antwerp. This picture shows the small Yorkshire fishing village of Runswick Bay. Rather in the manner of Newlyn in Cornwall, a colony of artists grew up there, and Friedenson visited it to work a number of times. It was here that he met his future wife, and after they married in November 1906, he returned to Runswick Bay the following spring in order to paint this picture. It was much admired at the Royal Academy that year, and purchased for the nation.

Gallery label, August 2004

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Catalogue entry

N02138 RUNSWICK BAY 1907

Inscr. ‘Arthur Friedenson 1907’ b.l.
Canvas, 40 1/2×60 1/2 (103×154).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1907.
Exh: R.A., 1907 (28).
Repr: Royal Academy Pictures, 1907, p.143; Art Journal, 1907, p.201.

Runswick Bay is a small Yorkshire fishing village, here seen from above looking south. The artist's son T.S. Friedenson wrote (13 December 1959): ‘Runswick Bay, Yorkshire, was a place he frequently visited. I believe there was quite a colony of artists who went there every summer -including Harold and Laura Knight. It was at Runswick he first met my mother, Lily Watson (who was the daughter of Thomas Watson, principal of the Harrogate School of Art); they were married at Edinburgh on November 5th, 1906. The following summer (1907) the picture of Runswick Bay... was painted.’

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I