Etching by Rowland Langmaid (1897-1956) - A Barge Race at the Lower Hope

etching, signed in pencil, image size 7 x 16.5 cm, framed and glazed

The Lower Hope is the stretch of the Thames between Tilbury and Cliffe.

Rowland Langmaid was born in Vancouver in 1897 and joined the Royal Navy in 1910, serving aboard HMS Agamemnon and HMS Renown during World War One. Langmaid was sometime a pupil of the marine artist William Lionel Wyllie (1851-1931) and, upon leaving the navy in 1922, he continued his studies at the Royal Academy and the Royal College of Art. He produced marine etchings and watercolours of views mostly around The Solent, Thames and Cornish waters, and recorded many of the capital naval vessels of the period.

In World War Two he returned to the navy, being appointed by Admiral Cunningham as the official artist with the British Mediterranean Fleet, and after the war published an illustrated book containing an account of the war at sea in the Mediterranean.