Thursday, November 22, 2012

WHITBY GINNELS?


I inherited these four watercolours from my husband. They were painted around 1900 by his mother, whom I never met, as she had died only weeks before I first met him in 1946. The pictures stayed packed away in boxes until after he died, but I have brought them out to see the light of day, and had them framed as a set.

The artist herself named the top two, and I made a trip to Whitby to visit the scenes myself - a rather eerie but somehow romantic experience, to 'meet' one's mother-in-law in such a way, 60 years after getting to know her younger son, and several years after his death.

Sandsend, Whitby

Arguments Yard, Whitby

 


















The second two pictures, below, were un-named, but I began a search of the web to see if I could confirm my feeling that they too are Whitby scenes.  I found old photographs that seemed to be looking past Whitby Old Town Hall to Market Place, seen from a point very similar to the painting on the left. The one on the right shows a ruin on a hill which could well be the old Abbey.

I shall be immensely grateful if anyone is able to confirm these two last locations for me, so that I can name them all and hang them as a group on my diningroom wall.

Whitby harbour and Abbey ruins?
Now confirmed as the view from Church St, Whitby,
looking past the old Market Place on the right
towards the River Esk