Montague Dawson: A Moonlight Scrap

Montague Dawson: A Moonlight Scrap. This dramatic watercolour on paper shows a WWI R-class destroyer escorting a battleship through a night-time encounter in choppy seas. The moon has emerged from behind scudding clouds to illuminate her bow as she makes smoke to mask the battleship behind her. An enemy ship can be seen on her port side and the waterspout from a shell can be seen clearly to starboard. All three ships are firing their guns, the orange flashes bright in the darkness. Written in pencil on the reverse ‘A Moonlight scrap’. English, circa 1915.

Montague Dawson RMSA, FRSA (1890–1973) was the son of a keen yachtsman and the grandson of the marine painter Henry Dawson (1811–1878). He served in the Dazzle Painting Section at Leith in WWI and in 1924 was the official artist for an Expedition to the South Seas by the steam yacht St.George. He was present at the final surrender of the German High Seas Fleet and many of his illustrations depicting the event were published in The Sphere. After the war, Dawson established himself as a professional marine artist, concentrating on historical subjects and portraits of deep-water sailing ships often in a stiff breeze or on high seas. During WWII he was once again employed as a war artist and again worked for The Sphere. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Society of Marine Artists, of which he was a member, from 1946 to 1964, and occasionally at the Royal Academy between 1917 and 1936. He was considered one of the greatest living marine artists, whose patrons included two American Presidents, Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, as well as the British Royal Family.