Fletcher's Yard, Limehouse RMG BHC1876

Fletcher's Yard, Limehouse

Fletcher’s Yard was the site of one of the oldest firms on the Thames, as Fletcher had set up a shipbuilding business at Shadwell in the 18th century. They moved to Limehouse in 1818. As Fletcher, Son and Fearnall, they became pioneering steamship builders, and eventually switched to ship repairs.

This scene is of a ship in dry-dock. Workmen are shown chopping wood, and pushing wheelbarrows. Piles of timber beams lie on the side of the dry-dock. To the right is a large chimney. The dry-dock is surrounded by warehouses and other buildings, those of the West India Docks being visible behind their enclosing security wall in the right background. In the distance ships can be seen on the Thames with the tower of St Anne's church, Limehouse, and houses on the south side of the Thames on the left. The artist has taken a high viewpoint, on another large ship in dry-dock south of the one shown. This is clear from the ship's cathead protruding into the image lower left, and Fletcher's certainly had such a dock.

This picture has a a received attribution to the English landscape painter Charles Deane, who lived and worked in London and exhibited in almost all Royal Academy exhibitions between 1815 and 1851, specializing in views of the Thames and Bristol. However, comparison with the other few examples by him in public collections now suggests ths work is not of his style or quality. Its merit is in what it very competently shows, and from an unusual compositional viewpoint, but the hand is not as good as Deane's.

Fletcher's Yard, Limehouse