William Lionel Wyllie R.A. 1851-1931

London, Royal Academy, 1889, no.81

W.L.Wyllie Marine Artist, Roger Quarm and John Wyllie, Barrie & Jenkins, 1981, p.122
The Magazine of Art, Cassell & Company, 1889, p.272
Academy Notes 1889, Henry Blackburn, Chatto and Windus, p.8 illustrated.

Painted in 1889 and exhibited at the Royal Academy, the present work was described in The Magazine of Art from that year thus, ‘Mr Wyllie’s ghostlike “Phantom Ship”-curiously reminiscent in design of Turner’s “Fighting Téméraire” and “The Burial of Wilkie”-is not only a work of imagination, but it is one of the very few pictures in which flashes of lightning have been truthfully portrayed.’

The year proved to be a successful one for Wyllie; He and his wife Marion Amy, sailed off the West Coast of Scotland in the newly launched Grey Mare, every single picture that resulted from this voyage was sold to Glasgow dealers Brown and Phillips.  He was also elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and showed sixty-nine watercolours, painted on board The Black Prince the previous year, at the Fine Art Society.

The present work is an interesting departure for Wyllie, concentrating as he was at the time, on highly realistic and unglamourised views of the Thames and the Medway.  The accuracy with which the vessel and the elements are rendered is dramatically offset by the supernatural ship emerging from the fog.  This creates a finished composition that is both intriguing and wonderfully atmospheric.