1910 Watercolour Portrait of Victorian Lifeboat heroine Grace Darling

Title - For those in peril
 
Date - 1910
 
Medium - Watercolour Painting on paper
 
Signed -  M. Coates
 
Picture size - 15.5cm x 12cm / 6.25" x 4.75"
 
Outside frame size - 40.5cm x 32cm / 16" x 12.5"
 
Condition -  Excellent
 
Frame -  Antique Victorian / Edwardian oak picture frame with period glass
 
If you ever see a picture of a girl with red hair in a maritime theme, or a girl at the oars of a rowing boat in a storm then the subject can only be Grace Darling, one of Victorian England's greatest heroines.
Grace was 22 and the daughter of the Lighthouse keeper on Longstone Island, one of the outer group of the Farne Islands off the Nothumberland Coast.
On the night of September 7th 1838 looking out of her bedroom window, Grace saw a Ship wrecked on one of the rocky Island outcrops.
She and her Father decided that the weather was too rough for the Lifeboat to launch from the mainland so the two took the Lighthouse rowing boat and rowed out over a mile in rough seas to the stricken ship.
With Grace holding the rowing boat steady her father William brought five of the nine survivors onto the boat. They rowed back to the Lighthouse and then her father and four of the survivors returned for the other four so that all nine of the shipwreck survivors were rescued.
Unbeknown to them the Lifeboat did launch but got to the wreck after the rescue had taken place. The sea was too rough for them to return so they rowed to the Lighthouse and stayed there for three days till the storm had calmed to a point where they could return to the mainland.
Grace Darling beacame a National heroine almost overnight when the story reached the Public through the newspapers. She and her father were awarded the Silver Medal for Bravery from the Organisation that, in time, became the RNLI. Queen Victoria contributed to the donations made to Grace and her father.
Tragically, four years later at the age of 26, Grace passed away from tuberculosis. She is buried in the Churchyard in Bamburgh, Nothumberland where a stone effigy of a sleeping Grace, holding an oar, lies at the edge of the graveyard providing a landmark for passing Sailors.