The Fleet Off the Coast, Beachy Head (c. 1790–1805): Art, History and Details

The Fleet Off the Coast, Beachy Head (c. 1790–1805) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Samuel Atkins (British, 1760–1810).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This watercolor depicts the breathtaking headlands of Beachy Head, the highest, most dramatic chalk sea cliffs in the United Kingdom. A marine painter active during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Samuel Atkins patriotically associated Britain’s identity with its coastal geography and famous navy. A fleet of sailing vessels is seen in the distance in full sail, suggesting a rare moment of the entire fleet’s departure.

Object facts

• Title: The Fleet Off the Coast, Beachy Head
• Date: c. 1790–1805
• Creator attribution: Samuel Atkins (British, 1760–1810)
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor with graphite underdrawing
• Dimensions: Sheet: 34.4 x 48.4 cm (13 9/16 x 19 1/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2011.411

A detail from the museum

Beachy Head, the site depicted in this drawing, worked its way into popular culture and literature around the time that Samuel Atkins made the work, including a song of the Royal Navy and a poem by Charlotte Turner Smith, a contemporary of the artist.

Collection credit

Gift of Lowell Libson in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred M. Rankin Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lemonedes, Heather. British Drawings: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Exh. Cat. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.