Frank Rutley Sailor with Coconut Cargo, Sidmouth, Devon

Frank Rutley: Watercolours 1878–1893

This picture is one of a delicate collection of works by Frank Rutley that we have for sale, depicting landscapes around Devon, Cornwall, Surrey and Kent, including at Sidmouth and Teignmouth, Padstow and Tintagel, Dorking and Leatherhead, Margate and Sandwich. The artist focuses on landmarks in the landscape, both natural and made-made—such as cliffs, hilltops and castles—and there is a sense of an interest in the materials of such places: the eroding rock face, undulating tor, clay roof tile or slate stone wall. A number of the watercolours are painted in grisaille, at dusk or early morning, and as a result give a strong sense of shape, form and atmosphere.

It is quite possible that these works are by the hand of the pioneering 19th-century geologist and mineralogist Frank Rutley (1842–1904). Rutley was born at Dover, Kent and wrote specifically on 'The Eruptive Rocks of Brent Tor' (1878) on the edge of Dartmoor, close to our Devon locations. He settled in London where he held professional appointments, first at the Geological Survey Office in Jermyn Street, and in charge of the rock-collection in the Museum of Practical Geology, and from 1882 as Lecturer on Mineralogy in the Royal College of Science. Our subjects include London's Kensington and Wych Street, as well as Surrey locations.

Frank Rutley published and lectured widely, including seminal textbooks in the field such as Mineralogy (1874), The Study of Rocks (1879) and Rock-forming Minerals (1888). He illustrated these texts himself, not only with scientific diagrams but also with wood-engraved plates, showing landscape vistas—all the more poetic and discursive and much like the present paintings.