HMS Vanguard passing Old Portsmouth - Watercolour by Kenneth Yockney

Kenneth Arlington Yockney (1881-1965)
HMS Vanguard passing Old Portsmouth

watercolour, heightened with bodycolour

Framed and glazed
Overall dimensions including frame: 40.6 x 48.5 cm

HMS Vanguard remains the last battleship to be built by any navy. She was laid down in 1941 but, owing to design and construction delays, missed out on seeing any active service in WW2. Her first duty was to transport King George VI to South Africa for a royal tour in 1946, after which she served as flagship of both the Mediterranean and Home Fleets. By the mid 1950s it was already felt that her design was becoming obsolete and Vanguard was decommissioned in 1960. Large crowds lined Portsmouth Harbour as she was towed out of the harbour to be taken to Faslane to be broken-up. As she left the harbour she ran aground off the Still and West pub and had to be pulled off by five tugs.

Kenneth Yockney was born in Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1881 and was the son of Algernon Yockney (1843-1912), Fleet Paymaster of the Royal Navy but a talented painter himself, and Mildred Morris Alington (1857-1955), daughter of the Rector of Stanhope, Lincs.

Kenneth was raised at the family home on the Isle of Wight at Woodcliff in the village of St Lawrence and studied art at the Slade School in London. He remained on the island for much of his life and recorded the many ships, of all sizes, in the surrounding waters. He was scornful of any publicity and never even signed his work, selling his paintings locally and through the Portsmouth art dealer Percy Beer. He died at St Mary’s Hospital, Newport in 1965 aged 83.