"The Needles"

In: Overland Route; Part of our Paintings gallery

Date:
c.1850

Medium:
Watercolour on paper heightened with white bodycolour

Description:
The Needles was the "last spot on the British shores visible from the outward-bound steamer" and painted here from a P&O steamer a few years before the lighthouse was built in 1859. (Taken from an album of thirty-one watercolours, recording the Diorama of the Overland Mail Route from Southampton to Calcutta, and presented to Brodie McGhie Willcox, one of the founding fathers of P&O.)