WILLIAM PYE | BEFORE SUNSET, STORM COMING ON, WEST BAY, DORSET

Cheffins, 14 September 2017, part of lot 446

After leaving school, Pye went to sea, but bent on becoming an artist, he later enrolled at Heatherley’s art school in London. From 1883 he was living at Rodwell in Weymouth, Dorset, not far from the scene of this painting (probably West Bay in about 1896). He became a friend of Henry Moore, the sea painter. His obituary in the Southern Times noted that ‘Mr Pye did much to put Dorset on the map in the art world, the variety of the county proving an endless source of inspiration to him ... and his brush has recorded virtually every scene of interest on the Dorset coastline.’