Artwork of the Month - October 2015

Peter the Fisherman

Artist: Ethel Cheeswright (1874-1977)

Medium: watercolour on paper

Status: permanent collection GMAG 1990.79

As a young student at the Ladies College Ethel Cheeswright was: "certain only that she wanted to paint".

After some formal art training by 1892 she was living in Sark. Deeply religious, she was an ardent worker for the Mission For Deep Sea Fishermen and her respect for those who risked their lives at sea shows in a number of her paintings.

She was herself a tireless fisherman and described her joy and exhilaration: "to have been out with the boats at their work, shooting the seine for sand-eels, or dragging the purple trammel net, afire with phosphorescence from the moonlit sea, to have sailed close-reefed in a stiff breeze with the mackerel lines astern, or hauled up lobster pots from the mysterious depths of the water-world, or to have steered through the foaming tide-race of Les Burons or dared the perilous passage of the Guillot, thrilling as the boat leapt forward on the crest of a the green rushing seas like a thing alive".