File:'Southend' RMG PW0853.tiff

(Updated, February 2014) Inscribed, as title, and signed by the artist, lower left. This watercolour depicting Edwardians enjoying themselves at Southend-on-Sea echoes Wyllie's earlier watercolours of the French resort of Berck-sur-Mer and, like them, suggests that Wyllie knew Eugène Louis Boudin's blustery beach scenes. The emphasis is on light and atmosphere with the grey-green Thames Estuary waves breaking on the Essex beach where the children play. The foreshore shown is what, at the time, was called Southchurch Beach, backed by the newly constructed promenade to the east of the (now vanished) Southend gas works. This, with a coaling jetty connected to it by a viaduct over the seafront road, is behind the artist's position, and today this area of beach would be somewhere close to the junction of Victoria Road and Eastern Esplanade. The same view was photographed for local postcards of the period which, like the drawing, avoid the gas works but include the Camper Road jetty further along the beach to the east. This watercolour was reproduced as a colour plate in 'London to the Nore' ( London, 1905), written and illustrated by Wyllie and his wife, M.A. Wyllie. In the book Mrs Wyllie refers to this part of the Essex coast: 'West Cliffe, prosaic and common place, changes into Southend - all hotels and lodging-houses, electric tramways, and Salvation Army music - where the children build sand-castles and the sailing-boats carry East-End trippers to the sea.' (We are grateful to Ned Newitt for the information added here in February 2014 on the specific location of the view).