Wey Navigation

Turner in Surrey: the River Wey

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Turner, Joseph Mallord William; Newark Abbey on the Wey; Tate; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/newark-abbey-on-the-wey-202538

Described as Newark Abbey which is in fact Newark Priory, and even Newark Priory Church. The priory was a huge complex, and the ruined church is all that is left after the Dissolution . It looks to me that Turner sketched this from the road. The view is much the same today. The land is privately owned so close inspection is not possible. Cows are in the field much the same as Turner’s sketch. Newark Abbey is near Ripley as a point of reference. This painting is in Tate Britain

After the dissolution it was said that the priory was bombarded by cannon from nearby Pyrford Hill. After that the site must have been robbed for stone, as the ruined church is all that remains, apart from the odd outcrop

Turner would row down the river. We know that he stayed at the White Lion in Guildford, and at another in inn in Walton-on-Thames. He also thought nothing of sleeping on his boat. He was also a prodigious walker, known to cover 25 miles in a day including making sketches on the way. Sometimes he would set out with company and leave them behind if they couldn’t keep up

This is the entrance to Quarry Street in Guildford today. It is not by Turner! This is my painting made about twenty years ago. There is a link with Turner albeit a tenuous one. In order to take the reference photograph for this painting, I had to step back into the White Lion Walk in order to keep the bright sunshine out of my lens. The White Lion Walk is the shopping arcade which now stands on the site of the old White Lion Hotel. Let’s look at the next picture.

This is by Turner! It is one of his sketch books and shows the same view which I made years later, which still amuses me. I am sorry the image is so pale, but he worked in pencil. You can see the building on the left is much the same and the ancient church of St Mary stands in the background exactly as it does today On the right hand side is an inn much as today. Turner sketched this whilst staying at the White Lion in Guildford. Was he in the lounge relaxing or in his room. We know he didn’t like an audience so maybe the latter

We’ll leave it there for now and continue Turner’s drift down the Wey at some later date

New Haw Lock on the Wey Navigation Finished Painting

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New Haw Lock Finished Painting

This painting refers back to one of my rare outdoor painting trips with the Pirbright Art Club, when we went out to New Haw Lock on the Wey Navigation. An ancient waterway, the Navigation connects Godalming with the Thames, and is part river and part canal system, which is why it is called a navigation and not a canal.

The lock-keeper’s cottage is easily the worst house that I’ve ever drawn in my life, and I should be ashamed. Well I am. I have managed to crop out most of it and just left enough to give some colour and relief against the trees. The proportions are wrong. Perfectly correct when I sketched this scene on the day, but somehow when I enlarged and transferred the sketch both proportions and perspective went out of the window. I don’t know where my head was that day.

As I was about to leave, these two girls arrived to open the lock gates. Here they are opening the sluice gates to fill the lock with water before opening the gates. I photographed them quickly thinking they might be useful to put in the picture, as sometimes these scenes can be improved with the addition of one or two figures.

In actual fact, they became the picture, as I pushed the house more and more out of sight. Part of me still considers focusing on the two girls completely, without including any house at all, but can’t decide on that. The two figures are sharper on the painting than they are in the photograph

I’m busy getting paintings together for another exhibition in the Leatherhead Theatre in October, so would like to include this one, if I can

Looking forward now to working on something new, as I have been working on New Haw Lock for some time now and could do with a change. As for what I shall do next, I think I will do another long panoramic picture, probably of Langstone Harbour, which I have done before but not as a panoramic. The last one that I did, of Bosham, I sold recently from the web site, so could do with something else.

New Haw Lock the drawing ready for painting

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Girls on New Haw Lock 2Girls on New Haw Lock

Since the last post on the subject of New Haw Lock, I started to come off the idea of just painting the lock keeper’s cottage with the lock gates. It was a little bit cliche d. very attractive and very popular but I decided to put my sketch aside, and ran through the photographs that I had taken during the course of the morning

There were many of them on the camera and also on the phone camera which was quicker to use if anything interesting came up

These two girls came up as possibles. They had jumped off their boat whilst boyfriends did the steering, and each manned the winding mechanism of a lock gate, really putting their backs into the work. I picked the best action shots that I could find, and compiled them into a drawing

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I am sorry that the drawing is faint and I hope you can make out the figures. I drew them freehand from the screen onto tracing paper, and then moved them around the paper until they looked right, I hope.

What I like about them is that their tops are bright white which will stand out against the deep shadows behind them. It was a very hot day, one of the last of our heatwave, and they are wearing baseball caps with big peaks, which we nearly all wear nowadays as they are so effective against bright sun. So no faces to draw which is for me a great bonus.

This may prove to be a bad decision. I have actually started the painting and I will not publish an interim as it is such a mess but will post the finished item, no matter how it turns out

If anyone missed my previous post, this came from one of my very rare plein air painting days next to New Haw Lock on the Wey Navigation in Surrey. An ancient waterway from the c17, it connected Guildford and then Godalming commercially with the Thames right up to 1959. It still does but only for pleasure craft nowadays.

Plein Air Painting at New Haw Lock

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Something I rarely find time for is painting outdoors, but recently did, with our local art group at New Haw Lock, which is one of the many locks along the Wey Navigation in Surrey. The Navigation dates from the c17, and made the river Wey navigable by cutting canals across the meanders and shallows. Thus this mix of river and canal made the Wey navigable for barge traffic from Guildford to the Thames. Amazingly this traffic by horse drawn barge went on until 1959. By then the navigation had been cut through to Godalming in the south, and had been especially useful in carrying gunpowder from nearby Chilworth Mill through to the Thames and on into the Port of London

During the c18 the Wey Navigation linked with the River Arun, and on down to the south coast, but that leg was short lived and proved uneconomic to run. That section fell into disuse, although some sections have been revived by conservationists

In the picture, one of the many lock keeper’s cottages, very charming and very paintable still. New Haw is somewhat underrated and is easily missed when driving by.

We found shade to sit, as the day was hot and became hotter towards midday. The morning was enough for me, so for about 2-3 hours during which time, I worked out my composition, and just sketched putting in the shadows which of course changed quickly. Photography helps the sketch book and I recorded several stages. It is my intention to finish the painting in my “studio”, but for the moment need to finish my Alhambra painting

I shall look forward to painting the New Haw lock. This is a typical Surrey scene and a typical Surrey cottage. I will attach my drawing. I regretted afterwards only taking an A3 pad which didn’t give me enough space but at home i can use a half sheet which will enable me hopefully to include the lock in its entirety

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Now all I have to do is to decide whether or not to include the foreground tree which obscures much of the cottage but nevertheless provides some interesting lights and darks