Montague Dawson: ‘Six Metre Class boat by the Lymington Spit’

Montague Dawson: ‘Six Metre Class boat by the Lymington Spit’, a watercolour showing a white hulled Six Metre yacht sailing away from a racing buoy, running downwind with reduced goose-winged sails, behind her another yacht approaches the buoy on starboard tack, signed Montague Dawson, the reverse with pencil inscription ‘Six Metre Class boat by the Lymington Spit, ON 319’.  English, circa 1940

The International Six Metre class of classic racing yachts was chosen for the Olympics from 1908 until 1952 in Helsinki.  The second iteration of the International Rule was introduced for the 1920 Olympics.  This is therefore the first year where race committees had to resolve the problem of uneven competition between boats built to different rules.  In their heyday, Sixes were the most important international yacht racing class, and they are still raced around the world with active fleets in Europe, North America and Scandinavia.  Performance differences between classic and modern era Sixes are usually small and they can be raced together.

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 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.