Ship Inn, Mousehole

Christopher Wood 1901 - Aug 1930

Summary

A harbour-side scene with the tide out. There are five houses to the left, facing onto Promontary road. Thirteen figures are discernable on the road and two black dogs in the left-hand foreground. The foremost building on the left is the Ship Inn, which has two figures leant against its wall. Mousehole is a village in Penzance, Cornwall. The Ship Inn still exists on the harbour there. Rather than showing the darkness of 'closing time', Wood's colouring suggests that it is dawn with the fishermen winding their way home from a night of pilchard or mackerel fishing. It was painted during the final year of Wood's short life.

Display Label

Gallery text panel Tradition and Experiment Early Twentieth-Century Art 1900 - 1939. In Britain, the beginning of the 20th century coincided with the end of the Victorian age. Artists and designers experimented, challenging traditional ways of seeing and making; now trying to create a new art for a modern era. In painting, it was often traditional subject matter such as portraits, landscapes and interiors that would be tackled in new ways. The bustle and the brutality of urban life was an inspiration or something to escape from. Boundaries became increasingly blurred between design and decoration, painting and making and individual expression replaced academic authority. Art was made to be affordable and at a scale that would fit into ordinary homes. Some called the celebration of the modern into question after the horrors of the First World War. Traditional imagery was simplified or became childlike and slowly broke down into fragmented visions. Dream and chance tapped into subconscious anxieties and in 1939, world war intervened once again.