c1948, blue ink and pencil on paper, 25.5x21cm
Inscription: monogram b.c.: ‘FB’, and below: ‘Messina – O’Shade of Bourdon: above Forgive’; ‘Bourdon/dark sky’.
Provenance: Belleroche; Gordon Anderson; Paul Liss.
Illustrated: Belleroche, Brangwyn’s Pilgrimage, London, 1948, facing p146.
Exhibited: Brangwyn Retrospective, Royal Academy, 1952, cat 291.
Robert Hawthorn Kitson, who described himself as patron, friend and pupil of Brangwyn, built a villa, Casa Cuseni, in the town of Taormina, Sicily. In 1909 Brangwyn travelled to Sicily to see the house, co-incidentally producing a series of drawings illustrating the devastation of the Messina earthquake which had occurred on 28 December 1908, during which the shore sank by ½ metre overnight and 84,000 people lost their lives. Although many of the related etchings and watercolours were produced in the comfort of his studio from memory, site sketches or magazine articles, Brangwyn begged Kitson not to divulge his secret allowing the public to presume they were created in the midst of tragedy – ‘I am going to have a show at the Fine Arts of drawings and etchings at Messina so if anyone asks you about my working there please say I did an awful lot of stuff? It is necessary this little fiction’. Many of the works were exhibited at The Fine Art Society, London in November 1910 – Watercolours and Etchings by Frank Brangwyn.
Image courtesy Liss Llewellyn
