William Lionel Wyllie, R.A., (British, 1851-1931)

The Battle of Jutland

The Battle of Jutland
signed 'W.L.Wyllie/1917' (lower left)
oil on canvas
29.5 x 88cm (11 5/8 x 34 5/8in).
together with a hand-written letter from Wyllie. (2)

A letter from the artist accompanying the lot describes this scene as follows:

'On the left the 5th Battle Squadron under Admiral Evan-Thomas steaming away towards the distant main Battle fleet, next Warrior making her way out of action surrounded by the splashes of the German shells, Warspite with her helm jambed to starboard is turning circles close astern still in hot action. On the right is the smoke of the German fleet hull down below the horizon.'

Provenance
Commissioned from the artist by Mr Chadwick Kershaw in 1917.
Private collection, UK.

After the unification of Germany under Prussian supremacy in 1870, the new country lacked one of the attributes of a Great Power. In consequence the Imperial German Navy was established in the following year. From 1872 a building programme was instituted that by the mid-1880s had produced a respectable, but lightly-armed fleet of 95 vessels, none of them larger than a frigate. The development of trade worldwide required that the fleet should be able to protect Germany's sea routes and the requirements of her industry for raw materials brought about the acquisition of colonies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, which also served as coaling stations for its ships. The possession of a navy permitted the projection of German power across the world and in turn was vital to Germany's scramble for 'a place in the sun' in competition with the United Kingdom and France, which already had colonial empires.

In 1898 a series of remodellings of the Imperial German Navy began that introduced battleships and other types of vessels that indicated a desire to rival the British Royal Navy, at that time the largest and most powerful naval force in the world. An arms race between the two nations developed from 1904 and German naval building programmes were stepped up with a view to matching the Royal Navy not only in numbers, but also in the size, armament and speed of its ships. The United Kingdom out-built Germany in this race. At the start of the First World War in August 1914 the Imperial German Navy possessed 22 pre-Dreadnoughts, 14 Dreadnought-type battleships and 4 Battle Cruisers plus numerous smaller vessels including the beginnings of a substantial submarine fleet.

From the beginning of the First World War British naval strategy was to confine the German navy to its bases, denying it access to the Atlantic and at the same time to blockade German ports so as to shut off imports of raw materials, while simultaneously protecting the UK's own trade routes. The IGN realised that it could not challenge the entire British Grand Fleet based in the Orkney Isles, but it hoped that its High Seas Fleet - the component operating in the North Sea - could lure part of the British force into a trap and destroy it before its comrades arrived. On 31st May 1916 Vice-Admiral Sir David Beatty's Battle Cruiser squadron engaged Vice-Admiral Hipper's Battle Cruiser squadron off the Danish peninsula of Jutland. Beatty forged ahead, but on observing the whole of the High Seas Fleet behind Hipper, he retired, drawing the Germans onto Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, which was racing to support Beatty. In the early evening, the two fleets engaged and although British casualties in ships and men were higher than German losses, the High Seas Fleet retired to Wilhelmshaven and never came out in force again during the remainder of the war. German naval strategy turned to submarine warfare.

We are grateful to Dr Andrew Cormack for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.