EVEN MORE STORMS "He is reputed to have excelled in calms" ----- Samuel Redgrave, 1878 "His ocean is invariably the weakest part of his work" ----- Colonel M.H.Grant, 1926 His chief fault is a total lack of accent; all is harmonious, even tender ----- Colonel M.H.Grant, 1926 "tameness and lack of vigour" ----- E.Keble Chatterton, 1928 "He developed a meticulous style ..... and his work has little variety" ----- Anonymous Copyist, 1970 "He found his subjects almost entirely in shipping on the Thames" ----- Oxford Companion to Art, 1989. detail from painting below Christie 16th July 1965, lot 8; 36½ x 50; unsigned Sotheby 29 Nov 1978, lot 162; 13½ x 14; unsigned Christie 11 June 1971, lot 34; Cornelius van de Velde ? "Ships in a Gale"; 12 x 14 Sheppard Sale, Robinson & Fisher, London, 20 Mar 1924, lot 22; signed "The shallow waves which rolled under his window taught young Monamy what his master could not teach him, and fitted him to imitate the turbulence of the ocean". Horace Walpole, 1780/81. The cunning devil. On this page we undoubtedly find Monamy at his very tamest and weakest. Lack of vigour is displayed on every inch of every canvas. Exactly "what we should expect from a former house-painter who had never experienced the suspense, the terrors, the immensities of deep-sea roving." E.K.Chatterton, 1928. R.I.P. These storm canvases are not without their problems, however. Not every Monamy is a Monamy. click on picture Purely on style --- especially the treatment of the waves --- this picture, left, seems more probably a Swaine. The ship looks later than Monamy, also. Advertised in Apollo, August 1937; 35 x 52; "signed". Sale: Robinson & Fisher, London, 25 Mar, 1926. Signed, on spar left Christie 23 June 1978, lot 72; 21 x 49 storms, gales, tempests more storms, gales, tempests the all-purpose storm storm prints puzzles introduction       chronology & authenticity artistic range monamy website index dunham massey top © Charles Harrison Wallace 2004 all rights reserved