Monet in Mind – Beatrice Bright

Posted: 17th May 2021

Beatrice BRIGHT
b.1861 London – d.1940
Evening Glory after 1918
Oil on canvas
Beatrice Bright is a little-known artist who studied alongside St Ives artist Julius Olsson.
She succeeded in exhibiting paintings of St Ives at the Society of Women Artists.
Inspired by the coasts of Cornwall, Bright regularly painted swirling waves crashing upon coastal rocks.
Her compositions give the impression that she painted them sitting next to the sea, and you can almost feel the spray of the waves hitting the rocks.

Jemma from the Future Ferens reflected on Beatrice Bright’s Evening Glory

Inspired by Jean-Francois Lyotard’s chapter Scapeland in The Inhuman Reflections on Time, a French philosopher who I explored during my BA in Fine Art, I wanted to reflect our senses in short sentences and feel present in the moment when looking at Beatrice Bright’s Evening Glory 1918.

Monet quotes
“ I am working, but when one has ceased to do seascape, it is the devil afterward – very difficult; it changes at every instant, and here the weather varies several times in the same day”.

The DESIRE to inhale. Exhale. Visualise. Feel. Touch. Your breath is escapable, absorbing every essence of fresh, sea air. It is hot. SUNLIGHT seeps through the perspex of blue. Blue is the colour of calmness. MELANCHOLIA of choppy waves roll into one another, racing spontaneously to the finish line. FROTHING into bubbly gestures, the gallant crashing of the waves become a work of Art itself, a sympathy or a band perhaps. Seascape is a formation of sound. The sea is a mysterious coven waiting for adventures to evolve, beneath the continuous leaps and rolls of joy; a beauty that brings happiness and admiration, is also illusory. It is seen as an illusion of desire, but a place where deceit and destruction begins.

Samuel Courtauld, the founder of The Courtauld, wrote poetry about the artworks in his collection. Following in his footsteps many years later, young people aged 16-25 from The Warren Youth Project in Hull, were inspired by Hotel Royal, Dieppe to compose their own creative writing.

“Breathe: Based on Evening Glory after 1918”

There is a kind of magic in the air,
here, where birds call out to each other,
where tides and rock whisper their secrets.
An ease,
horizons stretch forever,
where dreams
can be brought into reality.
Sail to somewhere new,
fly as the wind carries you…
or take a breath,
let it fill your lungs and relax
for a moment or two,
then return to your life but know
sky and sea will be here to greet you the next time you need them.

By Kelly Cartwright