The Wreck of the 'Madeleine Tristan', Chesil Beach

Notes to an auction house from RE's daughter: "[This picture] was painted the year he and my mother married. He had just sold "The Blue Barge" for £100 which was sufficient for them to start married life! My father had been painting in the West Country during the early 30s as, following his solo show of drawings at the Goupil in 1929, the Redfern offered him a show to be entitled "Paintings of Dorset Seaports" in 1933. There is a drawing of a beached vessel from his sketchbook of 1933 at Chesil Beach. Certainly the painting also looks very much …

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Notes to an auction house from RE's daughter: "[This picture] was painted the year he and my mother married. He had just sold "The Blue Barge" for £100 which was sufficient for them to start married life! My father had been painting in the West Country during the early 30s as, following his solo show of drawings at the Goupil in 1929, the Redfern offered him a show to be entitled "Paintings of Dorset Seaports" in 1933. There is a drawing of a beached vessel from his sketchbook of 1933 at Chesil Beach. Certainly the painting also looks very much like Chesil Beach but he has tilted the boat the other way and altered quite a few of its features. He often did this sort of thing." See sketch below.

Several titles have been attributed to this painting. See the AKA list. Two others have been suggested too - 'Wreck on Chesil Beach' and possibly 'Coastal Scene with a Beached Ship', but these are more likely to be titles of another painting. 'The Wreck of the “Madeleine Tristan,” Chesil Beach' is listed as Cat 12 in the March 1935 Redfern Gallery exhibition catalogue and Wreck on Chesil Beach is listed as Cat 26. We have no photo for Cat 26 so we have to wait until one turns up to find out if it is a different painting of the …

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Several titles have been attributed to this painting. See the AKA list. Two others have been suggested too - 'Wreck on Chesil Beach' and possibly 'Coastal Scene with a Beached Ship', but these are more likely to be titles of another painting. 'The Wreck of the “Madeleine Tristan,” Chesil Beach' is listed as Cat 12 in the March 1935 Redfern Gallery exhibition catalogue and Wreck on Chesil Beach is listed as Cat 26. We have no photo for Cat 26 so we have to wait until one turns up to find out if it is a different painting of the same scene or not.

This painting is exact to a black and white postcard sold locally 1930ish. The only difference is the 2 people in the front and the added colour, so the painting is not adapted from the sketch with the boat turned as suggested.

Thank you, Helen. Your observation is spot on.

It is not really a surprise to us that Richard worked from a postcard. He had a large postcard collection which he occasionally copied from or took details from. See other examples below.