Residents of a North Tyneside coastal village are hoping that an artistic connection can save one of its most iconic buildings.
Cullercoats was the subject of several paintings by celebrated US artist Winslow Homer, including the village's Watch House which opened in 1879 to allow the village's volunteer life brigade to look for vessels in distress. However, the Grade II listed building, which has been a snooker club since 1933, has fallen into disrepair and the work it needs done is likely to cost in excess of £250,000.
Despite this, there are hopes that a visitor to the town earlier this week could be instrumental in helping the building secure the repairs it needs and its future. Sylvia Yount is the co-curator of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and spent four days in Cullercoats ahead of the opening of the Winslow Homer: Force of Nature exhibition at the National Gallery in London, which opens on Saturday September 10.
Read more: Celebrated US painter's Cullercoats works to be shown at National Gallery in London
Homer arrived in Cullercoats in 1881 and though he had originally only been expected to stay for two to three months he remained in the village for almost two years, using it as an inspiration for many of his works. The artist, whose paintings which were largely of Civil War imagery and storms, is said to have gone rushing to the shore to sketch every time the signal went out for the volunteer life brigades to put their lives at risk and rescue people from ships in peril.
Despite his connection to Cullercoats, he is relatively unknown in the UK and until this exhibition which will display 50 of his paintings and watercolours, there were no Homer paintings in any public collection in the UK. Guide prices at Sotheby's show his masterpieces are often auctioned for at least seven-figure sums, so unsurprisingly there aren't any in the Watch House.
But scholars of Homer, of which Ms Yount is one of the art world's most respected, still head to Cullercoats after making the connection. Cullercoats Watch House committee member Mick English said: "The American audience where all of Homer's paintings end up are well versed that Cullercoats is where it is in terms of the influence it had on Homer's work.
"The fact that Sylvia Yount, who's one of the curators of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, came to Cullercoats is something that doesn't happen every day of the week. She's a world-renowned expert on Homer and she came here to create his steps and she could identify where the artists was standing when he did most of his paintings and she was overawed by the paintings to be honest - it's absolutely fantastic that she came here."
Sylvia, who was accompanied to the North East by her sister Noel, met with Mick from the Watch House and the group had drinks at the Salt House Cafe and enjoyed informal discussions about Homer. Mick says that Sylvia's visit to Cullercoats was unannounced though when he was introduced through a friend, she was "engaging and totally approachable" and took an interest in the Watch House.
Mick continued: "She was totally sympathetic to our problems and has said that she'll make it known among the hierarchy of Homer intellectuals and scholars. There's got to be some come back from it because he used Cullercoats in some of his pictures which are world famous and I'm sure there'll be people out there who are willing to help us but she can network Cullercoats in a far broader spectrum than we could ever hope to do."
When the Chronicle reported on the plight of the Cullercoats Watch House in August 2021, it was estimated that £70,000 was needed to bring the building up to scratch. But the results of recent heritage survey have shown that total to be closer to £300,000.
Mick ended: "Obviously we spend a lot of time promoting ourselves with coffee mornings and events but we're never ever going to be in a position to raise that sort of money by doing that sort of thing so we're now looking at making connections with the Heritage Lottery Fund and seeing if they're able to help us."
To find out more about the Cullercoats Watch House, visit the building's Facebook page.
Where's your favourite place to visit on the North Tyneside coast? Let us know!
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