Enjoying a coffee at the Scottish Model Railway Exhibition at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow. Very successful time and many new and friendly people met over the three days. We’ve tried to explore new avenues of sales possibilities over the past year and have introduced the genre of railway carriage prints and railway posters and commercial art to a wider audience. Next target area will be the fine art & craft market. Difficult to know where to start in this field. Does anyone know of any recommended exhibitions to go to on national or local (East or North East England preferably) level that will fit well with this genre? Will all be grist to the mill.

The BBC One Show have just contacted me and are using the original artwork of the Stealing of the Crown Jewels by Colonel Blood by Harry Winslade in a forthcoming programme on the subject of the audacious thief. It’s surprising the types of request from the media that arise – one day it can be for an image of Whitby for a Dracula movie, then this!

I am currently working on a short video on the subject of carriage prints. Buying a camera drone for my youngest son’s documentary videos for his church has given me a certain leverage – (ok – yes – its a fair cop, it’s blackmail). Some footage of the landscape above the cliffs at Robin Hood’s Bay and Old Harry Rocks in Dorset will be spectacular, I’m sure! I’m hoping Nick Crane, TV presenter of Coast, Town and other programmes will lend a hand at some stage. He’s very enthusiastic about the subject and has a vested interest, in that he’s a relative of the carriage print artist, Freda Marston, and collects her work.

Found another item of original artwork for carriage prints – Britannia Tubular Bridge, North Wales by Kenneth Steel RBA, SGA. The paintings are gradually coming out of the artwork.

Not sure whether I’ve mentioned this already, but I have a facebook page on the subject of carriage prints which (confession time again) I am also awful at uploading frequently. As my school reports frequently said: Must do better, can do better, should do better….

A final thought – when is the best time to buy the carriage print of Cley windmill in Norfolk? Answer: When the sales are on…

Blessings to all readers,

Greg Norden

I’m sitting writing this latest epistle from a model railway exhibition at Peterborough. One of my targets this year has been to try exhibiting at several new and different events to bring the world of railway and commercial art into a wider sphere of influence, outside the usual railwayana marketplace. It’s quite interesting to meet the many people who are unaware of the existence of the world of carriage prints and railway posters – even people from a railway background. The next event will be our first attempt at the National (Warley) model railway exhibition at the N.E.C. in November, which promises to be a busy affair. We hope to venture into some art exhibitions next year.
I was very sorry to hear of ‘the clock man’, Ian Lyman’s passing away recently. He was local to me in Northants, living not far away in Kettering, although I only got to know him in the last few years. He was more than helpful in putting me in contact with collectors and finding local items of interest and struck me as being a very genuine man.
A few original carriage print artworks have turned up recently. I have been notified of the River Thames, Kings Reach by Frank Mason, Hitchin, Herts by John Moody, Cley, Norfolk by R E Jordan, King’s Lynn by Gyrth Russell, Blythburgh, Suffolk by Henry Denham, all in private collections and Norwich, Pull’s Ferry by Kenneth Steel appeared in auction in Norfolk recently and was purchased by an aging and eccentric enthusiast – many thanks to that most helpful of Norfolk collectors, Paul Thurtell, for collecting it for me!
An interesting development recently has been hearing about the possibility of one of the 60+ carriage print artists still being with us. I am currently trying to ascertain if Alan Gray (the artist responsible for Arundel, Sussex and Eynsford, Kent from the Southern Region ‘B’ series prints) is still alive. A customer contacted me recently and sent me an article by Alan from a local Walthamstow art magazine, dated 2010, giving a potted biography of himself and his work. I have just started to make an attempt to trace him. He was born in 1927 and I believe he still lives in the Walthamstow area. Any information from local readers on Alan would be much appreciated. Gray had an unusual style using strong dark lines of body colour or charcoal, differing from many of the other carriage print artists who used a more traditional watercolour approach. I have the original painting of Arundel here and a couple of other artworks by him – one (Abridge, Essex) is on sale on my website www.travellingartgallery.com
I know of only two other living carriage print artists – David Cobb, the former President of the Royal Society of Marine Artists (R.S.M.A.) and Ronald Maddox, President of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (R.I.).
Much of my time in the past month or two has been spent sorting a large deceased estate. It has been a sobering (and pretty exhausting) exercise going through countless boxes of railway ephemera, hardware, books, clocks, cutlery, chinaware etc. amassed over many years. Many of the boxes look as if they had been brought home over 50 years ago and never or rarely sorted or looked at. It has been with somewhat mixed emotions as I’ve gone through each box – a sense of real gladness that someone had bothered to save so many items that would have otherwise been destroyed; feelings of sadness that the owner never saw or enjoyed the fruit of many of their labours; and the excitement and sense of privilege in sorting an historical treasure trove of railway history. The phrase “You can’t take it with you” is an oft used and, sometimes, trite expression but, nevertheless, a simple fact that often gets neglected in its implications.
Much of the material I sorted probably originated in the early 1960s from the old Bishopsgate Stores – a massive archive of GER, GNR, GC, LNER, BTC and early BR ephemera and documents housed in the old former Eastern Counties Railway, London terminus at Shoreditch. It was latterly a goods and stores depot and was destroyed by a massive fire on 5 December, 1964. 40 fire engines were unable to save the buildings and the stores and archives were destroyed with it. I have many official railway press photographs of the fire which give some idea of the size of the area, which later lay derelict until 2003 when cleared for building work, including a new station.
Having re-read this month’s BLOG – it seems a little on the serious side, so how about finishing with a brain teaser. I have explained above what R.S.M.A. and R.I. stand for, but
Q) do readers know what the letters D.N.A. stand for?…….
A) National Dyslexic Association
Regards to all readers,
Greg Norden

With the help of Robert Forsythe, I have added a Facebook page on railway carriage prints. Do have a look and contribute if you would like to. The Facebook page is RailwayCarriagePrints or go to www.facebook.com/RailwayCarriagePrints

Recent customers of my fine-art carriage prints have been the Llangollen Railway, http://www.llangollen-railway.co.uk who are renovating two of their ER suburban coaches and replacing old faded prints with a wide range of local views using reproduction prints from TAG. I have also helped the Hull & Barnsley Stock Fund with original fittings for one of their coaches. I wish both every success in their ventures.

I have put a couple of pieces of original Southern Railway poster artwork on the TAG website including an unseen painting of the art deco swimming pool at Bexhill-on-Sea in Sussex by Verney Danvers from the 1930s http://www.travellingartgallery.com/landscape/print/merchdetail/SA04.html It survived in an attic with a painting of Ramsgate by Danvers and Kenneth Shoesmith. Both were in the attic in a house in Sussex, when it was struck by lightning, which blew the fuse box out of the building!! The SR poster of Ramsgate has turned up in the past but the Bexhill image has still not surfaced, probably due to the destruction of many SR posters at Waterloo in the 1960s and 70s, when clearing out the bill offices (I was there at the time, but too shy to ask whether I could have any!). If anyone has seen the poster do let me know.

Have had stands recently at the Bluebell Railway Collector’s Fair, Great Central Railway Auctions and Sheffield Railway Auctions and good to meet old faces and introduce railway and commercial art to new customers and those interested in the genre. The interest in the skill and styles of the mid-20th century artists is certainly growing and more people are collecting artwork and prints, including investors. I also hope to be able to have a stand at some Art Fairs next year, where the art world is starting to take notice of commercial art, and have applied for a stand at the National Model Railway Exhibition at the NEC later this year – still no response to several of my emails!

Keith Archer & Mick Thompson very kindly sent me photographs of Hull, Victoria Dock (or the site of) as it is now, just before the only remaining feature, a large grain tower (visible on the left), was demolished. Almost everything was bombed in the war, including Drypool Church, which features in the painting – see http://www.travellingartgallery.com/landscape/print/detail/L304.html. The whole area is now an industrial estate.
I managed to get out a few times and photograph some carriage print locations on my travels but the weather has been poor and the visits have normally turned into reconnaissance exercises. Visited Portsmouth Harbour during the 175th anniversary of the P&O cruise liners at Southampton Docks (superb array of their 7 liners from the boat, ‘Balmoral’ on the waterfront!) and worked out the viewing point of the artists for a couple of the images, but must return to photo them sometime when it’s not raining! Also visited Blaneau Ffestiniog and worked out the vantage point for this dramatic view – http://www.travellingartgallery.com/landscape/print/detail/L417.html – after climbing to the top of a slate mountain, whereupon I was attacked by midges. As I have said previously, finding these viewpoints can be a dangerous exercise. The actual viewpoint is not easy to get to and, again, I shall return to photograph this view for one of the series of ‘then and now’ books I am working on.

I called in on the ‘Middy’ (Mid Suffolk Light Railway) last week and was made most welcome, thanks Keith & Stuart. They have sold quite a few of my reproductions and are genuine connoisseurs of East Anglian fine art.

I shall be adding more artwork for sale on my website in the next few weeks, mostly artwork un-related to the railways by the railway poster and carriage print artists, but some quality work, nonetheless.

Wishing all viewers a great remainder of the summer (?) and congratulations to Team GB. We may not have excelled at my favourite game, table tennis, but a superb effort otherwise.
Kind regards,
Greg

Carriage Print Update – BLOG 9th March 2011
Thanks for all the kind enquiries about my physical condition. Leg still improving slowly and attempts at playing table tennis again going well! My business address has now changed and details are on the www.travellingartgallery.com website.

I intend writing a series of articles with my friend Richard Furness, on the commercial artists responsible for producing much of the fine poster and carriage print artwork in the 20th century. As you will no doubt be aware, Richard is currently producing a superb series of books on railway posters, Poster to Poster, and has recently published his third volume on the Midlands and North Wales – see http://www.railway-posters.com/ I hope to incorporate these articles on commercial art in this blog.

I’m gradually getting to the bottom of some of the exact locations of the carriage prints. Most are obvious from the titles, but some are more obscure. Atlantic Coast by Langhammer and North Cornwall by Adrian Allinson both feature rocky coastal bays. I was pretty certain Atlantic Coast was Bedruthan Steps with its granite stacks on the beach between Padstow and Newquay and verified this using Google images on the internet – a very useful resource in identifying landscapes through pictures of locations on websites. This late carriage print from the early/mid 1960s was a last gasp effort by the Southern Region in claiming the coast as their territory which, sadly and savagely, came to naught. Locating North Cornwall proved much more difficult. Despite looking at numerous images of the coast, I was still struggling to identify it. Out of the blue, a very helpful correspondent strongly suggested Porthcothan (or Porthcovan) Beach as he thought he recognised the cliffs in the print as the place where his mother’s ashes were scattered and a location where he stayed as a boy. The beach is in the middle right of the picture and extends a long way inland to the right. The rock stack on the golden burn beach is called ‘Arch Rock’ although not much exists of it now as the arch collapsed recently – not surprisingly the major problem in me identifying it from current photos compared to the print issued around 1947! The stack at the end of Porthcothan beach is called ‘Wills Rock’. The Headland in the background top left is Trevose Head. Porthcothan is just north of Bedruthan steps and only a few miles from Padstow, the westernmost terminus of the Southern Railway at the time.

East Devon by Allinson turns out to be Otterton, identified by its singular church tower. Red Devon is Ladram Bay in the parish of Otterton. Adrian Allinson, the artist behind this, and a poster artist for the SR, GWR and BR, has ‘copied’ the composition of his painting almost exactly from a previous SR sepia panel – even down to the figures in the foreground! I wonder how many other photograph carriage panels were used in a similar way? Cornish Vale, the last of the four West Country views by the SR, painted by Allinson still needs identifying, so readers please help if you can. Yorkshire Dales by Rowland Hilder turns out to be of Burnsall in Wharfedale. Norfolk Broads by Frank Mason is almost certainly an amalgamation of different Broads scenes to give an overall impression rather than a specific location. The mill looks either like Horsey or Herringfleet and was also featured in Mason’s similar double royal poster of the Broads.

John Worsdale, a member of the Wapping Group of Artists (first president Jack Merriott), kindly wrote and told me of another case of carriage print ‘copying’. Frederick Donald Blake, another Wapping member, told John that he had spent five days at Fort William for sketching and painting Ben Nevis from Corpach. The clouds were so low during all five days that he never saw the mountain at all! He ended up buying a postcard of the subject and painting the view with the station in the foreground when he got home. Coincidentally, I have his initial ‘rough’ artwork here, and there is no station in the foreground so he has amalgamated the two images. P.S. To find out more about Wapping Members go to www.thewappinggroupofartists.co.uk .

One other interesting set of ‘coincidences’ noted recently which confirms a suspicion I’ve had for some time is the part played by local councils in the choice of early pre-war carriage print views. It was certainly quite common before the war for local authorities to dictate in large measure what they wanted their railway poster views to depict, and a council representative would often meet the artist and take them to the viewpoint they had planned – an artistic subject the artists were not always too happy about! In this era, councils and railways would often work together on holiday guides, so some joint venture was often understandable. Recently, on my travels, I have been to Peterborough to photograph the locations as they are now. Both the Henry Rushbury and Cyril Barraud views turned out to be from the riverside council buildings, and we were kindly given permission for access and let in through the offices on to their disused wharf behind the building to take the photos. The offices are planned for demolition in a year or two. Next stop was Fred Taylor’s view from the south east of the cathedral. This, again, turned out to be from about the 2nd floor of a completely different set of council and passport offices. Taylor has completely omitted the buildings in the forefront (built at the same time as the cathedral, so can’t blame post-1937 new structures!) to help his composition. A couple of weeks later we were at Harrogate to photo Rushbury’s Royal Baths, Harrogate. The exact vantage point is about the 2nd floor up in the council offices facing the baths. I didn’t have time to seek permission for photography on this one. After the war the railways seemed to have a completely free hand in which views they wanted.

Feedback on the ability to see all the images of carriage prints with details of artists on the new website www.travellingartgallery.com has been excellent, so many thanks for your comments to me at recent auction stalls we have had. Following collector’s requests, I have just added a selection of original prints and paintings for sale and more information on artists and the locations.

Kind regards to all readers,
Greg

BLOG 11 NOV 2010
The interview with BBC Radio Ulster (Radio 4) went well (apart from the discernible groan when I mentioned that Wilkinson’s painting of Plymouth Harbour, which hung in the 1st class smoking room of the Titanic, was only the tip of the iceberg in his prolific output of artwork, ahem. Other newspaper and radio interviews are on the cards. Commercial art is growing in interest. Hope to get to Pershore auction of railwayana this weekend. Have uploaded more artwork for sale on the website,too, see http://www.travellingartgallery.com/landscape/print/merchandise/artwork.html
PS Off crutches now after 18 weeks. There’s always a lot to be grateful for!

I will be interviewed on BBC Radio Ulster, ARTS EXTRA Programme tonight around 6.30pm re the work of Sir Norman Wilkinson. It looks as if the 20th century commercial artists are starting to get the wider recognition they deserve. It is in connection with one of his posters for the LMS which is being sold in the annual Christies Poster Sale in London on Friday. See http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/searchresults.aspx?intSaleID=22899#action=…&intSaleID=22899&sid=a114722b-cc9c-4553-948d-f2b30dc4520a for details of sale.
PS Am now walking (rather, hobbling!) without crutches, thank God.
Kind regards to all readers, Greg