William Lionel Wyllie R.A. British, 1851-1931

George Gurney in 1895

N. Mitchell Fine Art Gallery, London (label on the reverse)

Purchased by the present owner's mother

Private collection, Melbourne

The Royal Academy, London, 1890, cat. 265

Loan Exhibition, Guildhall, London, 1895, cat. 10, lent by George Gurney (part label on the reverse)

William Lionel Wyllie was the leading British marine artist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born into a family of artists, he exhibited at the Royal Academy in London from 1869 until 1931, was elected an Associate in 1889 and a Royal Academician in 1907. Birth of a Titan: HMS Blake is one of his important paintings of naval subjects.

HMS Blake, the Royal Navy’s lead ship of her class of armoured cruiser, was built at Chatham Dockyard and launched in 1889. Wyllie completed his painting of the momentous occasion the following year and it was shown at the Royal Academy. HMS Blake was indeed a naval ‘titan’: a 1,900-ton, 12-gun twin screw cruiser, built of steel. One of her first voyages was to assist against the Sierra Leone Rebellion. In 1895 she served one commission as flagship of the North America and West Indies Squadron and in December that year was commissioned into the Channel Squadron. Eventually, in 1906, she was struck off the navy list and became a seagoing depot for torpedo-boat destroyers.  She was sold after the First World War, in June 1922.¹

Wyllie was not only a master of marine painting but also had a keen personal and practical interest in naval history. In 1907 he established the first troop of Sea Scouts in Portsmouth, where he was then living; and in 1922 he joined the committee working to save and conserve Nelson's Victory.

1. See www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk; the site includes historic photographs of the Blake and her crews.