Beside the Seaside, Beside the Sea

Who could resist a trip to the seaside? Especially when you're tempted by this glamorous bathing beauty, luring you into the warm waters of the North Sea. Cromer, Cleethorpes, Scarborough or Skegness, so seductive in the 1920s and 30s, especially when you could travel there in comfort and speed on the London and North Eastern Railway. 

In our case, we took a rather more workaday Southern Railway train to Hastings, for Seaside Modern: Art and Life on the Beach at Hastings Contemporary. It's the perfect venue for an exhibition about the art of the seaside, right down on the front by the fishing boats and those black wooden sheds for fishermen's nets that it's built to blend in with. Fish and chips, ice cream and seagulls are all around. Oh, and the miniature railway runs right past the gallery.

It was hot and sunny, it really was. Because it always is at the seaside, apparently. These railway posters from between the wars are your introduction to this fun show. As curator James Russell remarks in his wall caption for this poster for Redcar, rarely has the North Yorkshire coast looked so radiant as Austin Cooper made it appear here in an image apparently inspired by the French Riviera. The captions for this exhibition are witty and informative throughout, by the way. Worth the admission alone; the pictures are an extra.  

They didn't have to take their clothes off to have a good time in Redcar, clearly, but over on the Lancashire coast, they had fewer inhibitions.

Naples-born Fortunino Matania created this poster for Southport, which as Russell points out, leaves us with "the curious feeling that we are somewhere between 20th-century Britain and ancient Rome". It's full of strong and athletic women, and pretty racy for around 1930. Not only has the young lady on the right allowed one strap of her swimsuit to slip from her shoulder, there's a rather distinct nipple showing through as well. Not surprising, perhaps, on the Irish Sea coast with a nippy wind blowing in. 

We absolutely adored these posters, which capture your attention right at the start of this show, but there's a lot more to see besides in a display that takes in painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and the seaside postcard. 

We don't believe we actually came across any images of Hastings itself in this exhibition, but nearby Rye Harbour certainly features in a couple of works by Eric Ravilious. 

Ravilious, who was brought up in Eastbourne, often returned to Sussex to depict the coast. In June 1938, the caption tells us, he stayed at the William the Conqueror pub in Rye Harbour, "taking equal pleasure in the dark beer and the bright sunshine". This watercolour was bought on the spot by his fellow travelling artist, Edward le Bas. 

Perhaps the most prominent place in the first half of this exhibition is taken by a painting packed with awkward, contorted bodies that you might assume at first sight is by Stanley Spencer. But The Cruise was painted by Mary Adshead, whose other work doesn't seem to be in a similar Spencer-like vein. People sprawl across the deck of a ship, a steward struggles with a tea tray, one man wrestles with a blanket. These people are on holiday (apart from the steward) but they don't really appear that relaxed. Well, travel can be stressful, can't it....

Or perhaps not, for the two dozing sunbathers in On the Beach, by Robert Duckworth Greenham, another painter we've not come across before. It's a very 1930s image, very flatly painted, and rather intriguing. Who is this woman in the foreground? She doesn't seem to fit in with the other two, nor to be quite dressed for the beach. 

At this point the exhibition moves upstairs, and it's fair to say we found this second half a little less compelling than the delights downstairs. There's still plenty of interest, though: sculpture by Barbara Hepworth inspired by the stones and driftwood found on the beach at St Ives; black-and-white photographs by Bill Brandt that make body parts appear like natural occurrences on the shingle beaches of Sussex; collage by John Piper; and more Ravilious watercolours, of boats and seaside detritus. 

But it's people on the beach that your eye keeps getting drawn back to. Even in wartime. Not many glamorous or skimpily clad sunbathers on this July day in a view by LS Lowry. It seems, to be honest, almost as grim as the trek to the mill, and there's not much indication that the sun is out. But a crowd gathers round the Punch-and-Judy show and there are some intrepid paddlers.  

There's perhaps a bit more jollification in Edgar Ainsworth's pen-and-ink depiction of Blackpool in 1945, the war in Europe at least now over. The beach is jam-packed. There are donkey rides. One man reads a newspaper, a knotted handkerchief on his head; another is slumped in a deckchair, a flat cap pulled over his eyes, a beer bottle clutched in his hand. Overhead, the seagulls, as ever, are poised to swoop. 

But before the war could end, many more lives had to be lost, the Germans had to beaten back from France and the Nazi regime had to be eliminated. The south coast's beaches were fortified during the war as defence against German attack, and then later they saw the preparations for the Normandy landings. 

Here, just off Selsey Bill in West Sussex in 1944, war artist Richard Eurich observed the assembly of the floating artificial Mulberry Harbours developed for use on the Normandy beaches. But the harbours themselves can hardly be made out, and what's more obvious are the anti-invasion barricades that effectively block the beach. 

It really didn't take too long after the war before people weren't going to Cromer or Southport or Blackpool for their annual seaside week or fortnight. They flew to Benidorm instead. Seaside towns in Britain had to reinvent themselves, with art galleries like Hastings Contemporary. It's well worth getting down to the seaside for this one. And you can have an ice cream afterwards. But do watch out for the seagulls. 

Practicalities

Seaside Modern: Art and Life on the Beach is on at Hastings Contemporary until October 31. It's open Wednesday to Sunday (and August Bank Holiday Monday) from 1100 to 1700, and admission to the gallery is a very reasonable £9 including Gift Aid. You're recommended to book tickets online in advance here. Allow yourself a good hour to appreciate the art and the captions. 

The gallery is less than 20 minutes walk, much of it along the seafront, from Hastings station, which has direct trains from London Charing Cross every half an hour, the fastest taking just over 90 minutes. 

If you fancy a trip to see Seaside Modern, you might also want to consider the excellent John Nash exhibition at Towner Eastbourne, 30 minutes or so away from Hastings by train. Stay overnight in East Sussex, though; squeezing both shows in on the same day is just about doable, but you'd be rather rushed. 

Images

Tom Purvis, East Coast Resorts by L.N.E.R. Excursions, poster advertising the London and North Eastern Railway, c. 1925. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Austin Cooper, Redcar, poster issued by the LNER, 1928. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Fortunino Matania, Southport, lithographed poster, c. 1930. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Eric Ravilious, Rye Harbour, 1938. Image courtesy of the Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art

Robert Duckworth Greenham, On the Beach, 1934, The Ingram Collection. © The copyright holder. Photo: The Ingram Collection
Laurence Stephen Lowry, July, the Seaside, 1943, Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London. © The Estate of LS Lowry. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2021. Photo: Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre
Richard Eurich, Mulberry -- The Pre-Fabricated Harbour Assembled, Selsey Bill, 1944, Imperial War Museums. © IWM Art.IWM ART LD 5189