'Life on the Fish Quay, 1916' by Robert Jobling

This painting of the North Shields fish market by North East artist Robert Jobling (born 1843) is coming up for sale at auction on Tuesday 8th June 2021. We would like to try and purchase this painting so that it can be kept on Tyneside and put on display for local people to see.

Artist Robert Jobling was born in the St Lawrence area of Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 5th April 1841 at the height of the North East's industrial revolution. His father worked in "absolute drudgery" in a glass bottle-making factory on the banks of the Tyne, and Robert and his four siblings spent their childhood in the crowded, squalid terraces on the banks of the 'coaly' Tyne.

Young Robert showed an interest in art from an early age and is said to have devoted "all his spare hours to drawing and painting."

After leaving the bottle-works aged 16 he worked as a house painter and decorator and then as a ship-painter in a Tyne ferry company's repair yard. He also started taking evening classes in art at the School of Design in Newcastle where he received tuition from William Bell Scott, a friend of many of the painters in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of Artists.

By 1866 Robert had been promoted to Foreman Painter at the shipyard. In the same year, at the age of 25, he first showed two of his own pictures in Newcastle at an exhibition to raise funds for the city's Mechanics' Institute. In 1868 and encouraged by positive reviews of his paintings, he made the bold move to give up his job as a painter in the shipyard and set up as an artist.

Although not well known outside of the North of England, Robert Jobling went on to become one of the finest painters of his generation and one who in his own lifetime was described as a painter "to whom we are indebted for the preservation on canvas of many aspects of the river which the ruthless hand of modern improvement has disfigured beyond recognition or altogether swept away." His paintings have been said to "capture the very heart of the North East and its people." He produced more pictures of fishing on the North Sea coast than of any other subject.

This watercolour painting of the fish market at North Shields was completed during WW1 and is a fine example of his ability to capture a way of life that was already vanishing.

In the shadow of the New Low Lighthouse of 1810, Jobling depicts the bustling activity of the quayside's fish sellers, fisherlasses (who carried heavy baskets of fish to sell around the streets of Tyneside), and the fishermen just back from the sea.

This is an important record of ordinary Tyneside life during the First World War and is possibly the painting titled 'Life on the Fish Quay' that Jobling showed in the 10th Exhibition of Works by Artists of the Northern Counties held in Newcastle in June 1916.

This painting is coming up for auction on Tuesday 8th June 2021 with a guide price of £400-£600 (with auctioneer's commission to be added to the final hammer price). We would like to try and purchase this painting so that it can be kept in the North East of England and put on show at local venues, for example at The Old Low Light Heritage Centre in North Shields, which overlooks the fish market where this picture was painted.

if we are successful in raising sufficient funding to then go on to acquire this painting at auction then we will ensure that:

It stays in North Shields;

Is put on display for people to see and enjoy,

Is made available for research by local historians

Is conserved and protected for future generations to enjoy

If we are successful in acquiring the painting then everyone who has given £20 or more will receive a high quality print of the picture and an invitation to see the original on display. Any funds remaining after a successful purchase of the painting will be used to undertake any essential conservation of the artwork and to ensure that it is mounted and framed with materials that will protect it against the future ravages of time. Any additional surplus funds will be donated to the charitable Trust that runs the Old Low Light Heritage Centre to help with the cost of running this historic 18th century building.

The painting measures 25 cms x 19 cms and is signed by Jobling and dated 1916

If we do not raise enough funds to enable us to purchase the painting at auction then we will refund everyone who has donated.