An original early 19th-century watercolour painting, Sir Charles D'Oyly, Pilchard Fishing, South Devon.

This beautiful painting by Sir Charles D’Oyly shows pilchard fishing boats in harbour on the south coast of Devon in the early 19th century. The quiet scene at still water is rendered through an economy of brushstroke and palette, whilst fine detail of figures and masts is picked out with the deftest dabs of white bodycolour.

The influence of D’Oyly’s tutor, George Chinnery—pre-eminent amongst the Western painters of his day living in the ‘Orient’—can be seen in this watercolour’s style. Although the subject is English, the loose, economical style resembles Chinnery’s Chinese landscapes at Macau, which were far more impressionistic in style than the topographical work of his English contemporaries working in the East.

Behind the serenity of the scene is an industry which was once a mainstay for its local people; pilchard fishing is the oldest large-scale, well-documented fishery in the south-west of England. Throughout the summer months large shoals of pilchards were caught off the coast and taken to pilchard cellars for processing. The pilchards were squeezed flat and the oil that drained out was mostly sold as lamp oil. The fish was purchased almost exclusively by Italian Catholics for religious fasting. Hundreds of families in every fishing village were involved in catching, preserving and selling the pichards, and many ancillary industries such as coopers, rope and sail makers, merchants, and shipbuilders were also dependent on the industry.