Peter Monamy - Posthumous Reputation

Posthumous Reputation

Throughout the 18th century, and well into the 19th, Monamy was consistently described in all references as "famous", even by Horace Walpole, although Walpole added that "he had little reason to expect his fame", because of his training as an apprentice, and "the views of his family". Later art-historical comment, partly influenced by Walpole, but especially during the 20th century, has tended to disparagement. In some cases these later accounts of Monamy's career, including the entry written by Lionel Cust in the first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, are wildly inaccurate. Notable among other inventive fabrications is an article which appeared in the Mariner's Mirror of April 1911, purporting to describe his life and work. Even this fantasy, however, does not suggest that Monamy was ever employed by the van de Velde family of marine painters, an unsupported assumption which first appeared in about 1950. Since about that time, or a little earlier, there has been a flow of paintings entering the market, and now forming parts of otherwise reputable collections, which can only be described as pastiches, detectable as inauthentic when compared with works that have solid 18th century provenance. Nevertheless, before the 20th century it had still been possible for Julian Marshall, a member of the South Kensington National Art Library, to note in 1895, that, after completing his apprenticeship, Monamy had been "reckoned the finest painter of shipping in England."