Charles Pears (1873-1958)
Provenance
Rountree Tryon Gallery, London
Exhibitions
Royal Institute of Painters in Oils, October 1934
Literature
Tatler, 16 May 1934, ill. pp. 28-29: 'A beautiful study of the quaintly-shaped heads of the long reef running out from the southwestern end of the Wight - and a familiar sight to all who have ever cruised in these fascinating waters, which are not only the happy hunting-grounds of the yachtsman. The big ships out of Portsmouth and Southampton do not go to sea past the Needles, for they take the deep water route by the Eastern Channel past Spithead, but the smaller fry do, and to anyone who has travelled in the cross-Channel boats the picture which the artist has presented is a very well-known one. Mr Charles Pears has few, if any, living superiors in his treatment of sea and sky effects, and also, be it said, in painting ships of all descriptions, from the mast and yards of wind-jammers to the modern floating palace and the rust-stained and picturesque tramp which trudges the ocean road.'
Portsmouth Evening News, 11 October 1934, p. 8: 'an effective painting,"The Needles Moonlight"
Apollo Magazine, 1934, v 20, p 281: Naming notable pictures in ROI exhibition - 'Mr Charles Pears's extraoridnary "The Needles, Moonlight" though it is essentially a poster design'
When this picture was exhibited in 1934, Tatler magazine wrote of it:
A beautiful study of the quaintly-shaped heads of the long reef running out from the southwestern end of the Wight — and a familiar sight to all who have ever cruised in these fascinating waters, which are not only the happy hunting-grounds of the yachtsman. The big ships out of Portsmouth and Southampton do not go to sea past the Needles, for they take the deep water route by the Eastern Channel past Spithead, but the smaller fry do, and to anyone who has travelled in the cross-Channel boats the picture which the artist has presented is a very well-known one. Mr Charles Pears has few, if any, living superiors in his treatment of sea and sky effects, and also, be it said, in painting ships of all descriptions, from the mast and yards of wind-jammers to the modern floating palace and the rust-stained and picturesque tramp which trudges the ocean road.