page_title: Etaples art colony
section_title: First decade
hierarchical_section_title: Etaples art colony / First decade
caption_attribution_description: English: Tramway at Etaples Français&#160;: Tramway à Etaples
context_page_description: The Étaples art colony consisted of artists working in the Étaples area of northern France at the turn of the 20th century. The colony had its heyday between 1880–1914, after which it was disrupted by World War I. Although broadly international, it was made up mainly of English-speakers from North America, Australasia and the British Isles. While some artists settled in the area, other visitors stayed only a season, or an even shorter time, as they journeyed from art colony to art colony along the coasts of Normandy and Brittany. There was no uniformity of style, although there were several shared interests. While most painters left the town in 1914, artistic activity of varied quality was continued during the war by volunteers, artists in uniform and war artists. With peace, some former residents returned to their homes and the persistence of a small colony attracted a few visitors, although little innovative work now resulted.
context_section_description: The first French artists to paint in the area were those particularly associated with open air painting. Charles-François Daubigny retreated there from the outbreak of the Paris Commune in 1871, where he spent his time drawing and executed at least one oil painting of beached boats (Gallery 3). Norman-born Eugène Boudin frequently painted along the Opal Coast and spent long periods in both Étaples and at Berck. Henri Le Sidaner, who was brought up in Dunkirk, spent the years 1885–1894 in the town and represented the area in all seasons. There he was joined between 1887-93 by his childhood friend Eugène Chigot (1860-1923), who shared his interest in atmospheric light and afterwards went to stay in Paris Plage.
  In 1887 also, Eugène Vail (1857-1934), moved to Étaples and spent the winter there, lodging with his Irish friend Frank O'Meara, whose letters home give us information about the colony at that time. Amongst the other artists working there were Boudin and Francis Tattegrain, several more Irish, the English Dudley Hardy, the Americans Walter Gay and L. Birge Harrison, and the Australian Eleanor Ritchie, whom Harrison met there and married. While the rest were painting tranquil figures down at the harbour or in the woods, O'Meara describes Vail as ‘painting the deck of a fishing boat in a heavy sea, life-size’. This was "Ready, About!", which won a first-class gold medal in the Paris Salon of 1888. In the following decade, Vail's Norwegian associate Frits Thaulow was to spend some time in Étaples while André Derain stopped there and in Montreuil-sur-mer during the summer of 1909.
  The period of Vail's stay was equally profitable for William Gerard Barry, who painted his scene of returning prawn fishers, Retour de la Pèche aux Crevettes, which was also accepted at the 1888 Salon. At the same time, Birge Harrison was completing his painting "The Return of the Mayflower". It was to be awarded a medal at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition and, for its use of an opalescent tone particularly, is seen as a precursor of American Tonalism.
  The colony that was in the process of being formed in Étaples and neighbouring villages such as Trépied, a mile away on the south bank of the river Canche, was in reality made up largely of English-speaking expatriates who needed to live cheaply. As Blanche McManus was to comment two decades later in the record of her travels, 'the colony has been formed by buying up, or renting, the fishermen's cottages at nominal prices and turning them into studios. Such is the popularity of art that the native fisher people importune one to be taken on for models with as much insistence as the beggars of Naples appeal to strangers for money.'
  Her account is supplemented by Jane Quigley's description of life there published in 1907. 'The usual plan is to live in rooms or studios and eat at the Hotel des Voyageurs or Hotel Joos – unpretentious hostelries with fairly good meals, served in an atmosphere of friendliness and stimulating talk. In winter the place is deserted, except by a group of serious workers who make it their home. Artists pay about twenty-five or thirty francs a week for board and rooms, and studios are cheap. Étaples has been called – and not without reason – a dirty little town, but it is healthy for all that. The artistic sense finds pleasure in its winding cobbled streets and mellow old houses and in the dark-complexioned southern looking people. Models are plentiful and pose well for a small payment, either in the studio or in the picturesque gardens that lie hidden behind the street doors. A great source of interest is the fishing fleet that comes up the estuary of the Canche to the quays where the fisher people and shrimpers live in a colony of their own. There is constant work for the sketch book, especially on Monday, when the boats go off for several days, the whole family helping the men and boys to start. All one can do amid this bewildering movement of boats putting up sail, and people bustling about with provisions, is to make hurried notes and sketches.'
caption: The market place and Étaples town hall, shortly after the tramway was built in 1900
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