Portsmouth Dockyard with HMS Victory - Watercolour by Kenneth Yockney

Kenneth Arlington Yockney (1881-1965)
Portsmouth Dockyard with HMS Victory, c.1950s

watercolour, heightened with bodycolour

Framed and glazed
Overall dimensions including frame: 34 x 42.2 cm

A view towards Portsmouth with the prominent semaphore tower centre and HMS Victory to the left. Visible beyond can be seen the old power station, whose chimneys were demolished in 1981, and the Round Tower and Fort Blockhouse at the mouth of the harbour to the right.

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.