Description
Autograph Letter Signed, describing his career, settling in Valparaiso, listing the galleries and corporations which have “the most important pictures I have painted in the last seven years”, providing the titles of the pictures. 3 pp. 7 x 4½ inches, pinhole, in good condition. 3 Leicester Street, Hill, 21 June, no year given. Uncommon. “The Government of Chile have several of my pictures, incidents in their naval warfare.” Thomas Jacques Somerscales (born in Kingston upon Hull 1842; died 1927) was an English marine painter. He is also considered a Chilean painter as he began his career there and many of his landscapes evoke the region. His father was a shipmaster, who sketched, and his uncle was an amateur painter. However he had no formal training as an artist and originally became a schoolmaster in the Royal Navy. He also travelled around the Pacific and while teaching in Valparaíso he started working as a professional painter.