Inspecting the Catch, signed and dated 1818

Watercolour

William Collins, the father of novelist Wilkie Collins, was once the best-known painter in Britain. In the early to mid-19th century, Collins’ charmingly sentimental genre scenes and mellow landscapes were hugely in demand and etchings of his most popular pictures sold in unprecedented numbers.

Our picture is typical of the artist’s quintessentially British blend of genre and landscape. It stems from a trip to Norfolk that Collins made in 1815. In 1817, Collins exhibited an oil ‘Fishermen Coming Ashore’ at the Royal Academy and our watercolour contains many of the elements that appear in that picture.