Fishermen’s Huts, Southwold Harbour

Lionel Bulmer’s painting is striking for its stark, formal composition, in which the fishing huts are set at a distance with the horizon stretching out far beyond. Aside from the flatness there is a sense of loneliness in this composition, offset slightly perhaps by the warm and bright colours that the artist has chosen to use for the sky and land. Using tiny dabs of paint, Bulmer builds up the sweeping tracts of land and sky by drawing from both the green and pink tones in his palette. In his use of a balanced and restrained palette, with its subtle handling of contrast between light and shade, Bulmer’s technique is reminiscent of French post-impressionist ‘Pointillist’ painters such as Georges Seurat (1859 –1891).

This area on the Suffolk coast is a place that Bulmer knew very well. He drew inspiration for much of his work from the East Anglian landscape, particularly the villages of Southwold and Walberswick on the Suffolk coast.

Lionel Bulmer was born in London and studied at Clapham School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He exhibited for many years at the Leicester Galleries and later at the New Art Centre in London. He was a member of the New English Art Club, a group that had been founded in 1886 as an exhibiting society dedicated to promoting avant-garde painting techniques of the French Impressionists – the influence of which is keenly demonstrated in Bulmer’s own work.

Places

England, Southwold, Suffolk

Subjects

fishing boat, fisherman, landscape C20th, flower, grass, house, hut

Materials & Techniques

board, oil, oil painting

Artist

Lionel Bulmer (1919 - 1992)

Title

Fishermen’s Huts, Southwold Harbour

Date

1971

Medium

Oil on board

Dimensions

height: 50.80 cm, width: 61.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the New Art Centre, June 1972

Inscription

bl: L Bulmer

GAC number

9694