Anon. Martha Gunn, The Celebrated Bather, Brighton

An original 18th-century watercolour painting – Martha Gunn, The Celebrated Bather, Brighton.

This brilliant ink and wash drawing presents the monumental Martha Gunn (1726–1815), Brighton's legendary 'Dipper', who helped women in and out of bathing machines in order to maintain their modesty when taking the waters.

Martha Gunn was renowned for her strength and stamina, as well as her entrepreneurial spirit, capitalising on the popularity of sea bathing in the 18th century. She earned the nickname 'Queen of the Dippers', not just for her physical prowess but also her scientific knowledge of the sea and weather, her personable character and ability to win her clients' trust.

She became a favourite of George Augustus Frederick, the Prince of Wales (1762–1830) when he visited Brighton and she enjoyed special privileges, including free access to the kitchen at the Royal Pavilion. With her profits, Martha was able to buy a house for her large family in Little East Street, together with a number of bathing machines which she ran as a business.

Her celebrity spread throughout the country when her image began to feature in popular prints. John Russell (1745–1806) painted her portrait, and Robert Dighton (1752–1814) produced a caricature portrait in 1801. In 1794 she appeared in an engraving by John Colley Nixon (c.1759–1818) repelling the invading French with a mop.

Martha continued to work as a dipper into her old-age; having started the profession in her twenties, her gravestone has her career lasting 'nearly 70 years'.

In this fabulous caricatural depiction, Martha is shown to be of towering stature, her size dwarfing the bathing machines behind her and her face-on stance confidently meeting the viewer's gaze.

The work is anonymous but is faintly inscribed on the verso 'No.6 North Parade' and the paper is watermarked 1794.

James Gillray (1756–1815), Robert Dighton (1752–1814) and Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) all worked in Brighton in the 18th century, producing caricatures satirising the fashionable seaside resort of the extravagant Prince of Wales. It is unclear whether North Parade refers to the prestigious Georgian terrace in Brighton, built in the 1780s lining the western side of the Old Steine, or perhaps in Bath, where a number of portrait artists of the period lived and worked.

It is possible that this drawing was produced by one of Brighton's numerous portrait profilists or silhouettists, who plied their trade in the town. Interestingly, the work also resembles the 'street portraits' of the Bath-born provincial itinerant artist John Church Dempsey (1802–1877), particularly his subject 'Bathing woman, Bridlington', c.1825, and the yellow and red patterning on the scarf resembles that used by Dempsey in a number of his portraits. Dempsey, however, typically recorded real figures that he encountered in his travels across Britain; he would have been too young to depict Martha Gunn from life, and the paper significantly pre-dates Dempsey's active period.

In watercolour and ink on cream wove paper with 1794 Whatman watermark.