The boys probably broke the family seagoing tradition owing to the tragic death of their father in 1866, when he was swept overboard from the ‘Charlotte Anne’ and his body never found. Their widowed mother thereafter kept a grocer’s shop in Polruan, where William’s brothers Robert (21) and Albert (18) were noted in the 1881 census as apprentice shipwrights, and their 16-year-old sister Elizabeth still at home. William was a 23-year-old ‘painter’ when he married Ellen Shaddick Herbert (21), daughter of a sailor, in her native Devonport on 14th January 1880. Their address was then jointly noted as 72 James Street but at the 1881 census they were living in Plymouth (30 Clarence Street) where they remained and had five sons, none of whom went to sea.

At the 1891 census William was listed as a ‘decorator’ and in 1901 and 1911, by which date he had moved to 5 Boon’s Place, as a ‘signwriter’. His 1926 death certificate states he was ‘Formerly a House Painter (Journeyman)’, so by then retired. It was not unusual to find such tradesmen living in seaports also working as ‘pierhead’ painters of ship portraits – usually broadside views of varied sophistication – for sale to seaman and shipowners, and this is what Pearn also clearly did. He was a competent and colourful ‘recording’ hand – a good folk-artist rather than ‘naïve’ – often including elements of background such as other shipping, the Eddystone Lighthouse and decorative skies. The four examples in UK public collections are one of the ketch ‘Champion’ (1879) in Jersey Museum and three in the National Maritime Museum, presented by the same donor in 1969: the schooners ‘Little Beauty’ (dated 1875) and ‘Ocean Swell’ (1878), and the brig ‘Martha Edmonds’ (1880).

Others regularly appear at sale, suggesting Pearn had a large output: most are oils but he also worked in watercolour. The enquiry prompting this note was one made to the National Maritime Museum about a privately owned watercolour dated 1903 of the fast cutter ‘Vanduara’ (Plymouth registry no. PH119), built in 1880 but shown in her later rig as ketch, possibly off the end of Plymouth Breakwater. At time of writing the latest example found is a 1910 view of the yacht ‘Carina’ off a coastline but others into the 1920s may also appear.

Pearn died aged 70, still resident at 5 Boon’s Place, on 23rd May 1926, after a three-year decline. His 73-year-old widow, Ellen, was still living there in June 1931, with at least one of their sons (Albert Henry), when she was among a party of seven travelling in one car on a pleasure-trip to Paignton. She was killed when it crashed owing to a tyre blow-out near Totnes. The coroner’s view that culpably excessive speed was to blame was negated by a jury verdict of accidental death and the driver escaped with a warning.

Summarised from Art UK’s Art Detective discussion ‘Can anyone supply further information on the ship portraitist W. Pearn?’