A Street Artist Comes To Staithes

Cumbrian artist Natalie Burns chats to Andrew Liddle about her recent trip to the Yorkshire Coast

An artist much acclaimed in her native Cumbria has turned her attention to Staithes, charmed by its ruggedly picturesque setting, characterful buildings and sense of history. Natalie Burns has in recent years been painting exquisite portraits of Georgian architecture in and around her hometown of Whitehaven and of Cockermouth, where she worked as a teacher. To date, there have been more than two hundred.

A long-promised return to the Yorkshire coast, remembered fondly from childhood holidays, and a visit to the fishing village once famed for its colony of artists, has inspired her like so many before her.

When the railway arrived in 1885, Staithes became a popular destination, often compared with Clovelly in Devon, and a group of eminent artists gathered here. By the turn of the nineteenth century there were about 25 of them working together in the village. Perhaps now best remembered of this Staithes Group is Dame Laura Knight who fell in love with the place when arriving in 1894, and for a time kept a studio in the village with her husband, the fellow painter Harold Knight.

Staithes remains one of the least changed (and most storm-swept) coastal villages in the country and is still a magnet for artists in spite of the tourist throng. “I was aware of its attractions from the many paintings and photographs I’d seen, and I’d watched the ‘villages by the sea’ episode on television which featured it. But nothing quite prepared me for the sheer ‘wow factor’ from the top of Cow Bar, looking down on the red roofs of the cottages tumbling to a secluded harbour. Like Laura Knight I was instantly smitten.”

She’s describing the classic view of village, beck and jetties which most artists are drawn to. Natalie, however, chose to focus on her passion for vernacular architecture, nurtured growing up in Whitehaven’s almost perfectly-preserved eighteenth-century new town. She is a prominent member of her Local Heritage Society and a forceful advocate for preserving its streets and buildings, which she continues to paint.

One of the first buildings which caught her eye as she descended was a typical row of three cottages built of local stone next to a white-washed townhouse, all clinging to the bank. Her painting does their simple austere character full justice. All the way down are tightly-packed dwellings, sloping at ground level, mismatched and squeezed into wherever space allows.

Cobbled lanes, with names like Gun Gutter, Slip Top and reputedly - at only 18 inches in width - the narrowest street in England, Dog Loup, have a charm all of their own.

“I could see as I began to explore that the higgledy-piggledy structures, the a variety of stonework, the orange pantiles, the painted render and bright colourful window frames and doors would make magnificent street paintings - and as far as I knew nobody else was depicting the village in the way I do my streetscapes.”

She describes herself exploring breathlessly the narrow streets and ginnels, camera in hand, taking reference photographs of the houses she wanted to paint. Those she snapped when venturing onto the harbour wall formed the basis of an attractive long view of the sea front, the Harbour High Street. The Cod and Lobster, the social centre of the village, is as usual on a sunny day a honeypot for tourists. So close to the sea wall, parts of it have been washed away a number of times in its long existence, most recently in 1953. To its left a dozen or so random two- or three-storey dwellings seem to jostle for living space. “I couldn’t help seeing a sort of crowded harmony here,” she says, brightly, “which I wanted to try and capture.”

Natalie’s graceful, understated, very English studies are a world apart from the French Impressionism that characterises much of the art produced, for example, by the Staithes’ Group. Her beautifully delicate watercolours are deliberately in style and medium in keeping with the Age of Elegance, the long period ruled over by the four Georges.

“Staithes has an entirely different sort of arrangement of buildings from those I usually paint - you could say, it has a different kind of grandeur of its own.” She wondered, briefly, if her style so effective for capturing neo-classical elegance, harmony and proportion would be appropriate for somewhere somehow so lacking in straight lines, the arrangements seemingly haphazard. “I had to believe it was and I was excited by the challenge.”

Single buildings that interest her typically appear as miniatures, 6 by 4 inches, a size commonly used by Lakeland water colourists in the past. Intimate details of The Royal George, a Grade-Two listed fisherman’s inn, built in the late 18th century when Staithes was the largest fishing port on the north coast, are picked out in an attractive colour-washed image which seems destined to appear as one of her Giclée prints that sell so freely in the Lake District.

For street scenes, such as the row of six houses and cottages in High Street, she favours long strips of high-quality Bockingford paper. “It’s all free-hand, based on multiple sketches and photographs, not a perspective but an impression – a picture book illustration though architecturally accurate.”

What she strives for is a kind of idealised accuracy, capturing the essential qualities of a building without the intrusion of modern impedimenta like tv aerials and dishes of which Staithes is remarkably free . The secret of their charm is bound up somehow in their simplicity, purity and clarity, their having nothing of modern hustle and bustle about them.

“Of course I went into the art galleries to appreciate how other artists had chosen to represent the village, and the Heritage Centre to learn about its history of fishing and smuggling and being battered by storms,” she adds. “As I walked about, I couldn’t help being aware of the sense of the past around every corner, found myself imagining all the buildings that Captain Cook might have seen - and just wanting to paint them.”

The great explorer and navigator came to live here in 1744, aged 16, apprenticed to a haberdasher. He stayed less than two years, having first heard the call of the sea in Staithes. Her fine painting of Captain Cook’s Cottage is another likely to appear as a print.

It’s clear that Natalie, as so many others, has fallen under the village’s spell. “I’m eager to return with my husband, James, to explore further, do some sketching and gather more material for paintings.” She smiles broadly. “Next time I want to talk to the ‘yackers’ – the locals - about the old days … do some of the coastal walks … perhaps find a fossil or two … and, you know, just enjoy the romance of the place.”

We look forward to her next batch of local views and to the time her work is on sale here as widely as in Cumbria. The village’s historical connection with art, of course, runs deep and the annual Festival of Arts & Heritage welcomes over 100 artists to display their work and paint en plein air. Natalie has her sights on it.