Beached Fishing Boat on Mersey Estuary Industrial Lancashire Landscape

Title: Beached Fishing Boat on Mersey Estuary Industrial Lancashire Landscape
by John Steane (b.1931)
Size: 15.75 inches (height) x 22 inches (width)
watercolor painting on paper, unframed
condition: Good, with minor edge wear
Provenance: from a large private collection of this artists work, Oxford, England

Description:
This evocative watercolour painting by British artist John Steane (b.1931) depicts a grounded fishing trawler marked “FD 233” along the banks of the River Mersey in Lancashire. Titled in pencil on the reverse as Wreck, Mersey, Lancashire, and dated circa 1966, the work captures a moment of stillness amid industrial decline and coastal erosion.

In the foreground, the half-finished composition reveals Steane’s process—light pencil marks indicate forms yet to be completed, contrasting with the deeply shadowed, richly painted wreckage of the wooden vessel. Behind it, a red and white houseboat sits further along the shore, with crumbling cliffs and grassy embankments to the left, while looming power station cooling towers and chimneys smoke faintly on the horizon. This meeting of natural decay and man-made industry speaks to the shifting identity of mid-20th-century northern England.

The River Mersey estuary has long been an iconic industrial waterway, once a major artery for the shipping and coal trades. Paintings of this region, especially those featuring derelict boats and working waterfronts, have become increasingly sought after by collectors of maritime art and British regional scenes. Steane’s work here is both documentary and poetic—a quiet record of a changing landscape that merges drawing and painting techniques to great effect.