Tower of London

Painted in the 1960's when the Thames was still busy and the cranes on the embankments were still working. In this painting we can see the Tower of London in the background across the River Thames. A steam tug boat pulls freight along in the foreground, while leisure cruisers go by.

Norman Wilkinson

Wilkinson was born in Cambridge, England, and attended Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire and St Paul’s Cathedral Choir School in London. His early artistic training occurred in the vicinity of Portsmouth and Cornwall, and at the Southsea School of Art, where he would also later teach.

At age 21 he studied academic figure painting in Paris, but was already interested in maritime subjects. Indeed, although early on he studied figure painting in Paris, further study with the river and coastal painter Louis Grier in Cornwall reinforced Wilkinson’s growing belief that he should concentrate on marine subjects, of which he became a master.

Norman Wilkinson was a successful marine painter and illustrator. He was also responsible for developing the concept of “dazzle camouflage” for British warships during the First World War. But it was as a poster artist that he reached his highest artistic level. In 1905, Wilkinson was commissioned by the London and North Western Railways to produce a poster advertising their rail/steam link to Ireland. Recognising the opportunity to create a new approach to railway poster design, he depicted the product as just one element of a broader landscape.

It was the first time this had been done and its revolutionary concept was an important influence in the development of the pictorial poster. He went on to organise the celebrated commissioning of poster designs from members of the Royal Academy for the London Midland and Scottish Railway company in the 1920s. Wilkinson believed that art should play an important part in advertising. His posters were well-planned and executed in broad tones of colour with a skilful use of black to strengthen the design. He was, in his words, “the father and mother of the artistic poster on English railway stations”

His career as an illustrator began with a first acceptance by the Illustrated London News in 1898, a publication with which he was long associated. He travelled widely abroad, in Europe, the Mediterranean area and in North and South America. In both world wars Wilkinson was important in the development of camouflage techniques, and he presented a big series of pictures concerned with the war at sea to the nation.

Wilkinson’s works are on display in the National Maritime Museum, the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Fine Art Society and the Royal Society of Artists. The Imperial War Museum has over 30 ship models painted in the variety of dazzle schemes by Wilkinson, mostly fro 1917.