'Smoking room, SS Skerryvore' (1902)

'Smoking room, SS Skerryvore' (1902), a photo by University of Glasgow Library on Flickr.

Ernest Arthur Binstead was a keen amateur artist who produced beautiful pencil drawings and watercolour sketches of the activities that went on around him during the first years of the twentieth century. During 2008, his niece, Miss Lee, donated two of his sketchbooks to Glasgow University Archive Services for permanent preservation. This set contains digitised images of each of the sketches in the first sketchbooks.

The first sketchbook includes sketches made between 1898 and 1908. The majority of the sketches, however, were made during Mr Binstead’s journey on the SS Garmoyle from Glasgow to the Isle of Dogs during April 1901. These sketches highlight both life on the ship and the sights viewed during the journey.

The second sketchbook features scenes around Dover and Folkestone in the summer of 1908. There are a variety of sketches, mostly watercolours, vessels at anchor in and around the harbours, and of locales around the cliffs.

Mr Binstead was born in 1863, the second son of Charles Henry Binstead and Elizabeth Bailey. Having spent his childhood in Grasmere in the Lake District where his father worked as a land and mineral surveyor, he trained as a solicitor. In 1915, Arthur married Mary Openshaw, the novelist, in Hastings and went on to spend the majority of his adult life in London.

For more information about this sketchbook please contact the Duty Archivist at Glasgow University Archive Services:

www.gla.ac.uk/services/archives/contactu s/

'Smoking room, SS Skerryvore'... by University of Glasgow Library