Brighton Piers

It might not be the most popular seaside location in the UK – well, there’s no maybe about it, Blackpool deservedly owns that title – but there’s something about Brighton. I first visited on a day trip in the mid 1970s and I’ve always enjoyed it ever since. After all, where else in the UK can boast a building quite as wonderful – and mad - as George IV’s Royal Pavilion?

Last weekend I went to Worthing. My mother and step-dad live there, having moved from Tottenham 11 years ago. They live a few doors down from my older brothers. I go most years to take the Christmas presents down and pick up those for my lot. While I was there last Saturday my brother popped in and asked if I wanted to go for a coffee in Brighton. Coffee – good, Brighton – good. While I was there I took a couple of photographs of the rather sad partial skeleton of the West Pier.

I always liked the west Pier, even though I never got to walk along it. The first time I visited would have been a year or two after it closed. It’s a shame. I always thought it had a real beauty to it. Far more so than the nearby Palace Pier. The Palace Pier, which is now called Brighton Pier, is still going strong, and I’ve sketched it and painted it several years ago (two coats of whitewash, guvnor) – see below.

So here’s the sketch of the pier as it is now. The other sketch is based on a photograph taken, I would imagine, in the late 70s or the 80s, and shows the West Pier as I remember it.

Beautiful Britain: Brighton Royal Pavilion

 Yes, I returned to Brighton for yesterday's beautiful Britain drawing. This completely mad piece of architectural exuberance is one of my favourite 'just for the hell of it' buildings.

Of course, some of its appeal lies in the fact that it was built for the Prince Regent, later King George IV. I've always found him a fascinating character, an opinion that was reinforced when I studied his life in some detail as a Mastermind subject. George was somewhat taken with Brighton when he visited one of his royal uncles, Henry Duke of Cumberland, there. His first Brighton home was a rented former farmhouse, which he had the architect Henry Holland rebuild into the Marine Pavilion. This was a far more conventional, classical structure than the Royal Pavilion. It proved to be a home conveniently far away enough from London for the Prince to be able to enjoy playing house with his illegal wife, Maria Fitzherbert.

The Prince assumed the regency in 1811, when his father George III, poor man, was incapacitated by the dementia which would afflict him for the rest of his life. In 1815 he engaged architect John Nash to remodel the Pavilion into its current form. It took a good 7 years. 

William IV, George's brother and successor, would stay in the Pavilion in fairly regular visits during his reign. His own successor, their niece Victoria, really didn't care for the place at all. The Pavilion was sold to Brighton, which helped pay for Osborne House, the royal family's new summer house. 

When I'd finished this one it was crying out for watercolour, and I applied washes of four colours. The bending of yellow, purple and blue in the sky above the main dome for once wasn't a clumsy accident, but a deliberate choice to let it happen and see what effect we could get.