The orator

Arthur Briscoe (1873-1943) was an etcher and painter of marine subjects. Educated at Shrewsbury School, he studied art at the Slade School under Fred Brown and at the Académie Julian in Paris and then spent his time sailing. Briscoe painted and wrote on yachting subjects including <em>Handbook on Sailing</em> under the pseudonym of Clove Hitch. Briscoe portrayed not just sailing vessels and the sea itself but, in particular, he delighted in portraying seafaring men at work.

Briscoe's original prints are now generally acknowledged as the finest marine etchings of the 20th century, as they display both the artist's intimate knowledge of the sea and his mastery of the etching needle. In particular, Briscoe conveyed the motion of the sea itself and the varied effects of light and shade with extraordinary economy of line. In 1926 Briscoe made a superb scale model of the <em>Cutty Sark</em>, a vessel which appears intermittently throughout his sketchbooks.

<em>The Orator</em> dates from the same year; it is an untypical print in that it depicts land-lubbers and was inspired by Britain's General Strike of 1926. The strike, mainly by coal-miners upset with the goverment's reduction in wages and worsening conditions, also included dockers, printers, power station workers and transport workers, hence Briscoe's interest in the subject. Although Briscoe undoubtedly had sympathies with these workers, his attitude towards the rabble-rousing orator who dominates the composition is unflattering, indeed critical.

See: http://www.campbell-fine-art.com/artists.php?id=128

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art   March 2018