Beside the Seaside

n                   This is a view of one corner of the study. If you are anregular reader, you will recognise most of the decorations and furnishings. Thensmall picture in the middle is a reproduction of William Dyce’s paintingnPegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5^th 1858, (usuallynknown more simply as Pegwell Bay), which is in the collection of the TatenGallery, London. It was probably started in 1858, and was completed by 1860.nThe painting is oil on canvas, 24 ½ inches by 34 ½ inches.

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n  In the foreground are Dyce’s wife, her two sisters, and hisnson.

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nDyce was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1806. He studiednpainting at the Royal Academy schools and travelled twice to Rome, where he metnFriedrich Overbeck, the Nazerene. The Nazerenes were a group of German 19^thncentury artists who worked in Rome, where they sought a return to thensimplicity, honesty and spirituality of earlier Christian art. The name,nNazerene, was originally a term of derision, used by their critics againstnthem, (in the same manner, Impressionism was also applied derogatorily to thenworks of Monet, Manet et al). The aims of the Nazerenes were instrumental innthe formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. With his meticulousnattention to detail and his practice of painting outdoors, (unusual at thentime), Dyce can be regarded as a proto-Pre-Raphaelite.

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nAs I mentioned the other day, you can return to great worksnof art and find something new. I think this applies to Pegwell Bay. On thensurface, it is a record of a family day out, a trip to the seaside, where anlittle boy collects seashells with his mother and his aunts. In the backgroundnare some donkeys, and fishermen with shrimping nets. The tide is out, the skynis darkening, and it is probably time they went home.

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nLet’s look a little closer. The full title of the paintingnis very specific. It records a certain day, in October 1858. Barring an Indiannsummer, that is not really a time of year for beachcombing – a little too bracing,nmaybe? That Dyce chose to be so specific is significant, it matters to him. Henis marking a particular day, and a particular time of that day.

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nIn the background are the meticulously observed and renderedncliffs. We can see the strata of the rocks, and embedded in them are flints andnfossils. There are more flints in the foreground, eroded from the cliffs andnwashed out by numerous tides, (flint is fossilised sponges). The strata pointnto the great age of the rocks, slowly laid down in layers over the millennia,nbut for all their solidity they are ultimately impermanent, and are just asnslowly being worn away. The fossils are the remains of creatures from anothernage, now extinct, and again pointing to both great age and impermanence. Fossilnhunting, seashell collecting and gathering other natural history specimens werenextremely popular with the Victorians. Some even made a living from finding andnselling fossils, perhaps the most famous being Mary Anning, who lived andnworked in Lyme Regis, and is the source for the tongue twister “She sells seanshells”.  Pegwell Bay was well known fornits fossils. The man on the right (Dyce himself, maybe) looks up at the cliffs,nindicating that we should also look closely at them. The very location, thenseaside, with its ebbing and flowing tides, again reminds us of the passage ofntime, of change, movement, strength and fragility.

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nAs evening draws in, the sky begins to darken, as anothernday, this particular day, draws to its end. It is reaching its conclusion,npassing away as it must. And in the sky, right in the centre of the picture,nagainst the darkening, can be seen the faint streak of a comet. This isnDonati’s comet, first observed by Giovanni Donati on June 2^nd 1858,nthe second brightest comet of the 19^th century, and, incidentally,nthe first ever to be photographed. (Abraham Lincoln – remember him from thenother day – sat on the porch of his hotel in Jonesboro, Illinois, to see thencomet on September 14^th 1858). It was closest to the Earth onnOctober 10^th. Dyce is recording an actual event in history, but isnonce more alluding to time, its passing and our relationship to it. The comet,na long-period comet, will not be seen again for over two thousand years, andnreminds us of the depths and immensity of space and the universe.

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nVictorian advances in science led to great anxiety and crises of faith, as thenevidence accumulated to overturn many long-held beliefs. James Hutton, thenScots geologist, had written about ‘deep time’ and the immense antiquity of thenEarth in the previous century. However, Hutton had a particularly obtuse prosenstyle, and is very hard to follow. His works were revised and restated by JohnnPlayfair in 1802, and by Charles Lyell in the 1830s, and Charles Darwin took,nread, and was influenced by, Lyell’s work on his voyage on The Beagle. Thendiscoveries of Mary Anning, and others, were evidence of extinction, of wholenspecies of beasts that had died out completely, which contradicted the idea ofnGod’s perfect creation. In 1859, whilst Pegwell Bay was being painted, Darwinnpublished his On the Origin of Species, yet more evidence that nature evolvednover great time, and did so without Divine intervention. We are familiar enoughnwith Darwin and the arguments about evolution, but a work that is unfamiliar tonmost, but which caused an argument of at least the same scale, was published inn1860. Essays and Reviews was a collection of seven pieces, each authored by anChurch of England clergyman, and proposed, amongst other things, that the Biblenshould be subject to the same method of enquiry as any other text, that itncould be read ‘as any other book’, and that scripture was open tonreinterpretation by successive generations. The arguments raged for years, and therenwere excommunications, sackings and indictments for heresy. Essays is hardlynremembered today, but at the time it sold more copies in two years thannDarwin’s Origin did in its first twenty.

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nDo you remember the Venerable Bede from yesterday, and how henwrote about Pope Gregory and the Angles/Angels thing, which caused St Augustinento be sent to convert the English? Augustine and his missionaries landed atnEbbsfleet, which stands at the head of Pegwell Bay, near Ramsgate, Kent. Isnthis why Dyce chose to depict this location as his subject? Is he alluding to thenarrival of Christianity in this country, and suggesting that faith is subjectnto the same ebbs, flows and erosions as the very earth itself? 

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nJust down thenKent coast from Pegwell Bay is Dover. Consider these lines from Matthew Arnold’snpoem Dover Beach (written c. 1851, first published 1867) : –

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nThe Sea of Faith

nWas once, too, at the full, andnround earth’s shore

nLay like the folds of a brightngirdle furl’d.

nBut now I only hear

nIts melancholy, long, withdrawingnroar,

nRetreating, to the breath

nOf the night-wind, down the vastnedges drear

nAnd naked shingles of the world.

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