480 - William Lionel Wyllie, RA,

William Lionel Wyllie, RA, British 1851-1931- Shipping in a choppy sea; pencil and watercolour on paper, 11.3 x 20.6 cm. Provenance: With Martyn Gregory, London [VG637]. Note: Wyllie was a particularly accomplished and celebrated marine painter during Victorian and early 20th-century Britain, with his works currently in the collections of the Tate, the Royal Academy, the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum, and the National Museum of the Royal Navy, amongst others. From 1906, when he moved to Portsmouth, he became closely associated with the Royal Navy, so much so, indeed, that he was buried with full naval honours in 1931. In a moving ceremony, reminiscent of Nelson's state funeral in 1806, his body was rowed up Portsmouth Harbour in a naval cutter past battleships with dipped colours, bugles calling, and quaysides lined with dockyard workers. The present work is an excellent example of Wyllie's typical oeuvre, depicting ships amidst rough seas.