Philip Wilson Steer

Catalogue entry

N02473 CHEPSTOW CASTLE 1905

Inscr. ‘P W Steer 1905’ b.l.
Canvas, 30 1/8×36 1/8 (76·5×91·5).
Presented by Miss Mary Hoadley Dodge 1909.
Exh: N.E.A.C., summer 1909 (25); Tate Gallery, April–July 1929 (183); National Gallery, June–August 1943 (61); Tate Gallery, November–December 1960 (48, repr. pl.13).
Lit: MacColl in Artwork, No.17, 1929, p.16; MacColl, 1945, pp.51, 206, repr. pl.30b.
Repr: Ironside, 1943, pl.46.

MacColl records that it was J. S. Sargent who prompted his compatriot Miss Dodge to present the painting, the first by Steer to enter the collection. The view should be compared with that chosen by J. M. W. Turner in his Liber Studiorum (repr. MacColl, 1945, pl.30a), which Steer always carried with him on his excursions. At least three other compositions of Chepstow Castle dating from 1905 to 1906 are listed by MacColl (op. cit.), including one in the collection of H. M. the Queen Mother of 1906 which shows the castle seen from a more distant point than in N02473.

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

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