We asked two leading figures in the arts community on the North Yorkshire coast to choose a painting from their collections that means something to them
Helen Berry, Curator at Whitby’s Pannett Art Gallery
Low Tide On The Beck, by Glasgow-born artist Harrington Mann. You can see it in Pannett Art Gallery.
Helen says: ‘I love the intensity of colour in this painting. Mann was a member of the Glasgow Boys, radical young painters who rejected academic painting, and instead painted contemporary rural subjects. Like the Staithes Group of Artists, they often worked out of doors (en plein air).
‘Many of Mann’s early paintings were of fishing communities along the Yorkshire coast and for over 10 years he painted in the Staithes area. Although he wasn’t a core member of the Staithes Group, he painted alongside its members, influencing, and being influenced by, them.
‘Painting in all weathers, using a portable easel, and often the recently invented tube paint, artists painting en plein air used quick, spontaneous brush strokes and a simplified palette to complete whole paintings.
‘In this painting Mann captures the essence of a summer’s day: with bleached land, deep shadows, and an almost luminous river and sea, you can practically feel the intensity of the sun. Although it’s small, and almost impressionistic in style, look closely and you will notice Mann has captured a great deal of detail, including the mooring ropes anchoring the fishing boats to the shore, and fishermen tending their boats.
‘This painting brightens up winter days with the promise of better weather coming soon.’
Andrew Clay, chief executive at Scarborough Museums and Galleries
T Ramsay’s painting of the town’s South Bay beach, painted around 1770. It is currently on displa
