Artist’s private collection sails in
AUNIQUE exhibition of the work of the great Yorkshire marine artist Jack Rigg is being staged this week in conjunction with an online auction that is scheduled to close on Sunday.
The 54 paintings, drawings and prints in the exhibition are the artist’s own collection of his work, pictures that he kept for the walls of his home and studio in Hull. Most of them have never been seen in public before.
David Duggleby art specialist Dominic Cox said: “Following Jack’s death last August members of the family decided that they would like to commemorate his life with a retrospective and asked if we would consider staging it in the Vine Street Salerooms that played a notable part in exposing his work to the world.
“We were honoured to be asked. Jack Rigg was one of the most remarkable marine artists of the 20th century. He was born in Leeds, he didn’t even see the sea until he was five years old when he was taken to visit his grandfather in Whitby. “He left school at 14 to get a job in a local textile mill and worked in that industry until he was 50; it was only at that point that this entirely selftaught painter finally took the plunge and became a full-time artist, spending the next four decades portraying shipping and harbours around Britain, particularly the East Coast.
“Jack took extreme care with detail indeed he was known to walk into the water of harbours to get the correct perspective, standing there in his Wellington boots, sketching. “Today his work is to be found in Buckingham Palace, the White House, public collections around the world, and homes of countless fishermen and seafarers who were great admirers of his work.”
Dominic added:
“The exhibition and auction cover over half a century of Jack Rigg’s art, from a landscape of Robin Hood’s Bay painted in 1962 through to ‘Spring Tide – Scarborough Harbour’ and ‘Shipping off Whitby’ painted in 2019 – when he was 92!”
The exhibition at the Vine Street Salerooms in Scarborough is open 10am to 4pm daily until Friday, July 26. The timed online auction that is running alongside the exhibition is scheduled to close at 5pm on Sunday, July 28.