Sea Painter: The Life and Work of J.R. Bagshawe Marine Artist
	In the early years of the 20th century a talented group of artists came together in the adjacent fishing villages of Staithes and Runswick on the stormy, cliff-bound shore of north Yorkshire. They called themselves the Staithes Group, a loose association that for several years held annual exhibitions, initially in Staithes and then in nearby Whitby. The founding secretary of the Group was Joseph Bagshawe, whose maternal grandfather, Clarkson Stanfield, was one of the great marine artists of the 19th century. Bagshawe was born into a Catholic family in fashionable Hampstead; his father was a judge. From an early age he showed a talent for drawing and painting, a talent that he was later to pursue at the National Art Schools in South Kensington. Every year in August Judge Bagshawe took his family on holiday to Whitby. It was there in the summer of 1896 that Joseph first met his future wife, Mildred Turnbull, the only daughter of Thomas Turnbull, shipbuilder and ship owner. It was another two years before they met again, but after a whirlwind romance they married in 1901. In the meantime, Joseph had discovered Staithes and, like so many other artists, was captivated by the village, the fisherfolk, their boats and the changing moods of the sea and sky: for the rest of his tragically short life (he died, aged only 39, in 1909) Staithes was the main, but not the exclusive, focus of his art. Seventeen of his paintings were accepted by the Royal Academy for hanging in its summer exhibitions, and 43 by the Royal Society of British Artists, of which he was a member. Some of his best works were free-flowing, impressionistic watercolours, commissioned by Raphael Tuck, the leading postcard publisher. In the last two years of his short life he also demonstrated considerable literary talent by writing and illustrating articles for several leading magazines. It was said of him after his death that 'he possessed the quality of genius' for, like his grandfather before him, he was a true painter of the sea.