Original etching by the listed artist and printmaker William Lionel Wyllie RA (1851 - 1931) created circa 1912.

Depicting HMS Victory moored in Portsmouth Harbour, with a group of Sea Scouts in foreground (see full details below).

Signed in pencil lower left margin. The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (who hold a copy of thei work in their collection) date this etching to between 1910 and 1914.

Etching with Drypoint, printed in grey/black ink, with plate tone, on wove paper. In the original 'ebonised' finish print frame, with later conservation mount and backing, glazed. 

Print in excellent original condition, with deep blacks and fine detail (see photos). Frame with some slight nicks and scratches, mount clean (see photos).

Plate size 15cm x 25cm, frame size 33.5cm x 43cm. 

Come with our Certificate of Authenticity, guaranteed authentic and original.

Delivered ready to hang.

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William Lionel Wyllie RA 1851 – 1931

English painter of maritime themes in both oils and watercolours, etcher.

Wyllie has been described as "the most distinguished marine artist of his day." His work is in the Tate, the Royal Academy, the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, and many other institutions around the world.

Wyllie was born on 5 July 1851 at 67 Albany Street, Camden Town, London, the elder son of William Morrison Wyllie (1820–1895), a prosperous minor-genre painter living in London and Wimereux, France, by his wife Katherine Benham (1813–1872), a singer.

Most of Wyllie's early summers were spent in France with his parents. He began to draw from an early age, and his natural talent was encouraged by his father and by Lionel Smythe, his step brother. He was given a thorough artistic education; first at the Heatherley School of Fine Art, and then in 1866, aged 15, at the Royal Academy Schools. At the Royal Academy he studied under Edwin Henry Landseer, John Everett Millais and Frederic Leighton, among others. He further demonstrated his precocious talent when he won the Turner Gold Medal in 1869 at the age of eighteen with ‘Dawn after a Storm’. He also had a love of sailing from an early age.

From the early 1870s Wyllie worked as an illustrator of maritime subjects for The Graphic. In 1875, the academy rejected two of his works, and in anger he declared his intention to give up art for a career at sea. Over the course of several sailing cruises as far afield as Europe he laid the foundations for a lifelong love of the sea and of maritime subjects.

Wyllie was a prolific exhibitor, with paintings and etchings shown at the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Grosvenor Gallery, the New English Art Club, the Society of British Artists, the Dowdeswell Galleries and the Fine Art Society.

Wyllie became a member of the Society of British Artists in 1875, and of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1882. In 1887 he became a member of the New English Art Club. In 1889 he was made an associate of the Royal Academy, and in 1907 he was elected as a full Academician. In 1903 he became a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers.

Wyllie was the most distinguished marine artist of his day and his work is still in great demand. 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 and bugles calling and quaysides lined with dockyard workers.

HMS Victory Portsmouth Harbour, sea scouts in foreground

A group of Sea Scouts launch a rowboat in this view of Portsmouth Harbour at low tide. The troops will row to 'Victory' and make the Scout Promise in the formal Investiture Ceremony. Wyllie established the first Sea Scout troop in Portsmouth after his move to the area in 1907. Structures line the shore, and a mixture of working and pleasure boats sail in the harbour. This scene was taken from Wyllie’s studio, at the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour.

Alongside the 'Victory' is a reboilered torpedo gunboat of the 'Alarm' class fitted with tall wireless masts. At centre is a single masted gaff-rigged cutter yacht. Across the centre right are a topsail schooner and a gull-rigged pilot/naval cutter. Moored on the right is a fishing cutter.

A supporter of Victory’s preservation, Wyllie often used her as his subject in paintings and etchings.