Frank Henry Mason (1875-1965)
Launch of the Mauretania

Sold £3,500.00

RMS Mauretania was built by Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson on the Tyne at Wallsend for the Cunard Company. It was the largest ship ever built at this time and was launched on the 20th September 1906. She was the sister ship to the Lusitania which was torpedoed by a German U Boat in 1915 and sunk. The Mauretania is possibly the most famous ship ever to have been built and allowed passengers to travel in luxury across the Atlantic. The Mauretania broke all records for the crossing of the Atlantic completing the journey in five days and held the record until 1911.

This large, important, painting by Mason is impressive to say the least. Not only is it a wonderful watercolour it also captures an historic moment in time on the Tyne which itself had a long and celebrated history of shipbuilding.

The images on the website do not do this painting justice!

Watercolour and gouache 76cm x 125cm (30" x 49") In frame 98cm x 149cm (38 1/2" x 48 1/2") Signed.

From a private collection.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Frank Henry Mason (1875-1965)

One of the 'Staithes Group' of artists, Mason was born at Seaton Carew, Hartlepool. It was in 1897-1898 - at around the time of the launch of the new-fangled Turbinia - that Mason quit marine engineering to become a full-time artist. Mason married in 1899 and he and wife, Edith, moved to Scarborough, overlooking the North Bay. In 1906 he exhibited a picture in London - Steam Trawlers Entering Scarborough - which he offered for sale for £73, a big sum in the early 1900s, but most of his watercolours at that time cost less than £20. Mason went on to become one of Britain's finest railway poster artists and his posters, from the 1920s and 1930s, often fetch hundreds of pounds when they are auctioned in London. He became a founder member of the Staithes Art Club in 1901.