Montague Dawson R.S.M.A., F.R.S.A. 1895-1973

This remarkable painting by Dawson captures five warships in the naval docks awaiting their commission.  The painting was commissioned by the naval yard directly from the artist, and it exists as a testament to British wartime artistic and engineering excellence.  The painting even remains in its original Vickers Armstrong painted frame.

The vessels ranged along the river from left to right are H.M.S. Eglinton, H.M.S. Exmoor, H.M.S. Nigeria, H.M.S. King George V, and H.M.S. Victorious.  All five vessels were commissioned between September 1940 and May 1941 and the picture must have been painted in 1940 when the vessels were in the naval yard.  Eglinton and Exmoor were Hunt Class Destroyers.  They were both commissioned in late 1940, and Eglinton served throughout the entire Second World War.  Nigeria was a light cruiser.  It was commissioned on 23^rd September 1940, and a year late, on 25^th June 1941, intercepted the German weathership, Lauenburg.  Valuable codebooks and the Enigma machine were found aboard.  King George V was a battleship and flagship of the British fleet.  She was commissioned on 11^th December 1940, and in May 1941 she participated in sinking the Bismarck.  Victorious, the largest vessel in the painting, was an aircraft carrier of the illustrious class.  Nine days into her commission her pilots encountered and attacked the German battleship, Bismarck.

Montague Dawson served in the Royal Navy during the First World War, and his attention to military detail is exemplary.  His fondness for these mighty warships is also clear, and in the present work Dawson has rendered a personally charged composition, with sailors painting the hull, busy activity both on deck and on the river, and the almost comic looking zeppelins overhead.  His viewpoint appears to have been from the Pelaw district of Gateshead.

Vickers Armstrong no longer functions as an active dockyard, and the last vessel to be fitted there was the current Ark Royal.  The hammer head crane, however, still remains and dominates the skyline over the River Tyne, as a testament to a bygone age of naval production.