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Canal Art - The narrow boat painters
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Canal boat painters
responsible for narrowboat painting, decoration and signwriting.
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 The
majority of the folk painting of the canals was from the hands
of a relatively few professionals, but they were professional
boatbuilders, not painters.
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| The decoration of the boat with painted
patterns, lettering and roses and castles was simply regarded as
part of the job, no more important than knowing how to measure
and cut timber, or how to caulk and tar the planking. That which
is now recognised as the Art of the narrow boats was, in the
heyday of canal carrying, simply an intrinsic part of the Craft
of being a competent boatbuilder. |
Talent will out, however, and
the painted work of an artistically gifted workman would soon be
recognised by his peers. For the reputation of the boatyard, and
thus to their mutual benefit, the best man for the job was
naturally offered more work and practice in that field, and
became effectively the firm's specialist decorator. But most
canal boatyards were small enterprises, and their few workmen
were primarily woodworkers with one or two of them doing the
fancy painting as required. Artistically untrained but manually
skilful, their pictorial work could be the purest folk art,
straightforward in intent, spontaneous yet neat in application
and refreshingly naive in effect - personal self expression
through the convention of others. |
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| A number of larger yards
did employ specialist painters whose work consequently
shows the extra confidence that constant practice brings, and
their greater production also means that much of their work
survives. Bill Hodgson was a full time boat painter and
decorator on the Trent and Mersey Canal for fifty years, and his
heavy, rather naturalistically painted florid roses strongly
influenced the tradition in that area, whilst on the Grand Union
Canal the painted work of boatbuilder Frank Jones at Leighton
Buzzard was in such demand that he ended up as a full time
decorative artist. Fellows, Morton and Clayton had such a large
fleet that their Birmingham boat dock employed George Preston as
a regular signwriter and decorator for most of his working life.
In Northamptonshire, Nurser's Dock at Braunston particularly
catered for the elaborately decorated coal boats of the owner
boatmen of the area, and the renowned Frank Nurser, son of the
founder, worked as a painter for most of his time, and as yard
manager for the rest. Such was the reputation of that yard that
Frank taught many other younger tradesmen the skill, and his
style and influence is still obvious today, nearly half a
century after his death. |
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| However, the boat
painting really belonged to the boat population, even if
the boatyards were producing most of it for them by proxy, and a
large number of boatmen were themselves accomplished artists
within the tradition. Done for their own families without
commercial pressure, their work is often painstakingly detailed,
carefully and slowly done even if the results are more clumsy
than the slick commercial work of the dock painters. It was
always difficult to find the time and space for painting in a
busy boating life of long hours and tiny cabins, so the large
proportion of work that was produced by working boatmen is quite
surprising, and underlines the importance that this private
trade convention had for the boat population. It was a visual
statement of pride and separateness, the badge of an elite. The
fact that this badge was an explosion of colour, texture and
applied art on an essentially mundane tool of the transport
industry - a small barge - still remains an unexplained miracle
of the industrial revolution, and a continuing delight. |
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