View (looking aft) from the Port Paddle Box of Great Eastern, showing the Trough for Cable etc.

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Illustrator Robert Dudley worked for ‘The London Illustrated News’ from 1858. He was sent to Newfoundland aboard the Great Eastern by the newspaper to record the landing of the Atlantic Cable. In 1867 he published a collection of 25 lithographs, based on watercolours he made during the trip. These were used as illustrations to the publication ‘The Atlantic Telegraph’. Dudley also exhibited one watercolour of this subject at the Royal Society of British Artists in 1866. In addition to his illustrations, Bartlett was well-known for his designs for decorative book covers, many of which include his signature. He lived and worked in Kensington from 1865 to 1875 and in Notting Hill from 1875 until his death in 1893.
Edmund Walker began as a miniature painter on ivory, abandoning the practice as photography grew in popularity. He then turned to architectural draughtsmanship, making sketches of country seats and selling them to the owners. His views of the Thames Embankment (completed 1870) were exhibited at the Royal Academy, as were many of his architectural drawings. Sometime before 1851 he began working for the publishers Day & Son. He made watercolour views and lithographs of the interiors of the Great Exhibition and lithographed William Simpson’s sketches of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny for the firm. He reportedly ‘never fully recovered’ from the effect of the failing fortunes of Day & Son, late in his career. Walker died in 1882, aged 68.

Places

Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic

Subjects

deck (ship), mast, crow's nest, paddle steamer 'Great Eastern', sailor (civilian), ladder, flag, life boat

Materials & Techniques

lithograph, coloured lithograph

Artist

Robert Dudley ( - c.1893)
Edmund Walker (1813/14 - 1882)

Title

View (looking aft) from the Port Paddle Box of Great Eastern, showing the Trough for Cable etc.

Date

published 1865

Medium

Coloured lithograph

Acquisition

Purchased from Parker Gallery, June 1960

GAC number

5132