Edward Hawke Locker Bargate, Southampton

An original 1803 watercolour painting, Edward Hawke Locker, Bargate, Southampton.

A fantastic watercolour by the English watercolourist Edward Hawke Locker (1777–1849), showing the medieval Bargate in Southampton, which was the main gateway to the city in Norman times. The two lions guarding the gate were originally 16th century and made of wood; they were replaced by new lead sculptures in the mid-18th century.

Edward Hawke Locker (1777–1849) was son of the Lieutenant-Governor at Greenwich Hospital, William Locker, and was responsible for the creation of the national picture gallery at the Greenwich Hospital in 1824 (the collection now housed at the National Maritime Museum and the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich).

Edward Hawke Locker entered the navy pay office in 1795, serving in its India department before becoming a prize agent and Edward Pellew's civil secretary during his East Indies, North Sea and Mediterranean commands from 1804 to 1814. He also spent time in Spain in 1813 during the Peninsular War alongside Lord John Russell, bringing despatches to Wellington, as well as visiting Napoleon in May 1814 during his Elba exile.

He was appointed secretary (1819) and then civil commissioner (1824) to the Royal Naval Hospital and in 1824 he carried forward his father's plans for a Naval Gallery in the Hospital's Painted Hall, with a gift of 31 paintings from George IV.

Locker was a major reformer of Hospital affairs, and a significant establishment figure with many friends in artistic and literary circles, including Robert Southey, Sir Walter Scott and Sir Thomas Lawrence.

There are works by Edward Hawke Locker in a number of public collections, including the V&A, the British Museum and Tate.

An associated inscription (see photo) gives the provenance of this drawing, given to Mary Twopenny by her cousin David at Little Casterton in 1832. David Twopenny, commoner at Oriel College, Oxford and lifelong Vicar of Stockbury in Kent, was a collector of art (a sale of his collection at Christie’s included an extensive collection of fine engravings after Turner).