Pilots on the Jetty
Carlos Grethe
Hans Thoma the museum director
Sea mood
Three men stand calmly and steadfastly braving the blustery wind and white-crested waves. Familiar with the dangers of the sea, wind and storm, they are waiting for a ship to arrive, just as they have so many times before.
Harbour pilots
The artist Carlos Grethe was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1864. His large-format work shows three pilots on a jetty or landing stage. The men are rendered in three-quarter view from the left, their hands in their pockets as they gaze stoically ahead. One figure is set on the central axis of the composition; the other two stand slightly behind him to the right. In the lower section, the men’s legs are reflected on the jetty’s wet boards.
All three are dressed in oilskin jackets, the waterproof cloth typically worn by sailors. Since Carlos Grethe spent most of his childhood in Hamburg, he was no doubt familiar with the sight of sailors in oilskins. Behind the men, the foreground is delineated by the jetty’s white wooden fence in the centre running parallel to the picture surface. Beyond the fence, the view opens up to the stormy sea and the horizon, where several sailing boats are just visible.
The painter and the sea
After completing his studies at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts and the Académie Julian in Paris, Carlos Grethe travelled to Mexico by ship. Along with a childhood in northern Germany, this sea voyage over several months may well have further fuelled his enthusiasm for depicting maritime life.
From then on, with a few exceptions, this theme dominated his oeuvre. He produced numerous drawings, sketches, pastels, lithographs and oil paintings dedicated to the subjects of the sea, the work of sailors, and life on board ship.
In 1890, at the prompting of his teachers Ernst Schurth and Ferdinand Keller, Grethe first took a position as an assistant teacher at the Karlsruhe Academy. The following year he was appointed at the School of Applied Arts with a full professorship.
Although Grethe’s life had been firmly rooted in Karlsruhe and its environs ever since his student days, his fascination with nautical life and his love of the sea constantly drew him to northern shores including, for instance, Denmark and Sweden.
Weather, light, colour
From 1911, when he painted this work, Grethe regularly stayed in the Belgian seaside town of Nieuwpoort. There he painted the sea, the harbour and coastal life, including many scenes of pilots, the Yser Canal and the Estakade, as the landing stage was called. Above all, Grethe was interested in depicting the scenery at different times of day, with different figures, and the changing weather and light conditions.
This work also illustrates Grethe’s intensive experimentation with the use of colour. At first glance, the painting may seem rather sombre.
Yet when looked at more closely, it reveals a wealth of colour, even in the seemingly monochrome surfaces. In shades of cool light blue and muted green, white and yellow, Grethe conveys the broken sky, gusty wind and stormy sea as an almost tangible presence. In their greenish yellow oilskins, the pilots are set off tonally from the background with the jetty’s white fence. Here too, Grethe’s fascination for working men and women, so often the focus of his work, is only too apparent.
He depicts the men with their weatherbeaten faces in their everyday reality without affectation, clearly conveying the hardships of their job.
The subject of working people, the unadorned view of the pilots and their lives, as well as the work’s fascinating painting style may well have impressed Hans Thoma, who wrote: “In my view, the painting ‘Pilots’ now on show seems to be one of this artist’s more important works, certainly worthy of acquiring for a collection, it is depicted in a vibrant style and with an authentic maritime atmosphere.”
In 1912, Thoma paid 6000 marks at the Baden-Baden art exhibition to purchase this work for the Kunsthalle collection.
Today, a very similar version of this subject, though unsigned, can be found in Cuxhaven.
Basic data
| Title | Pilots on the Jetty |
|---|---|
| Artist | Carlos Grethe |
| Date | 1911 |
| Measurements Plastic | H 170.5cm W 116cm |
| Material | Oil on canvas |