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About the artist
(This text appears on the back of the greeting card)
HENRY GARLAND (Circa 1830-1890)
Henry Garland was a landscape painter who lived in Winchester and London. Little is known about his life but he seems to have painted his first views of the Suffolk coast in the early 1880s. This painting is probably the one he exhibited in London in 1883 at the Royal Society of British Artists. It shows the rowing boat ferry at Walberswick which still plies its trade today, though a little further up the river.
From the nineteenth century onwards members of the Cross family frequently worked as ferrymen. In this painting Benjamin Cross is returning from Southwold to Walberswick. He is accompanied by one of his younger daughters, who appears to have been shopping in Southwold.
When the chain ferry took over in the closing years of the nineteenth century, the rowing boat became a back-up service. But when the local landowner Sir Ralph Blois declined to renew the chain ferry lease during the Second World War, Old Bob Cross set up a rowing boat service in order to take soldiers over to Southwold for their nights out. The rights to this subsequently passed to his son, Young Bob, then to Young Bob’s nephew, David Church, and then to David’s daughter, Dani. Dani Church, who until 2007 was one of the few working ferrywomen in the country, has recently had a baby — which may augur well for the long-term future of the ferry.
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Walberswick image courtesy of Messum's, specialists in British Impressionist, Modern British and Contemporary painting and sculpture: www.messums.com
