A UNIQUE exhibition honouring the work of important Watchet sea captain and maritime painter Thomas Chidgey is to be held in the town from March 11 to 17.

The artist, born in 1845, painted coastal sailing ships from Watchet and some other ports, as well as maritime scenes, and his work is of great historic interest – accurately recording vessels such as schooners, brigs and ketches at a time when there were no photographs.

“We only know of about 30 of Thomas Chidgey’s paintings, but he must have painted hundreds and we’re hoping from the exhibition, that people will give us information about where they are,” said Jim Nicholas, curator of the Watchet Market House Museum, which is sponsoring the exhibition.

“His artistic ability to capture the various moods of the sea – his portrayal of waves being particularly outstanding – and to illustrate all the intricate and delicate rigging and sail structure of various different vessels, was much admired.”

The exhibition is taking place at the Lynda Cotton Gallery, in Swain Street, where owner Nick Cotton is co-curator with the museum, and a number of the painter’s descendants will be attending the opening.

The 25 paintings being shown have been loaned from private local owners, Gloucester Museum, the Blake Museum in Bridgwater and Watchet Town Council, as well as ten from Watchet Market House Museum.

“Thomas Chidgey was a significant Watchet figure and it will be nice for people to realise that and see a body of his work – it will probably never happen again,” said Nick.

“I’m a big admirer of his paintings – you can smell the sea. They evoke something we don’t remember. They have the ability to take you to that period when sailing ships dominated our seas here.

“Steam ships were coming in. There are often one or two little ones included in the far distance, but he was painting the last of the sailing ships. They were coming to an end as he came towards the end of his life,” said Nick.

Thomas Chidgey is now recognised as one of the foremost Pierhead Painters of his time – the name given to a style of ship portrait painting, done while the vessel was briefly in port, rather stylised and, as they were mostly for professional seafarers, highly accurate in technical detail.

He was completely self-taught and mostly painted the 19th century fleet of Watchet ships, and was the equivalent of a photographer in his day, when ship owners or captains would ask him to paint their vessels.

A master mariner himself, from a seafaring family as so many Watchet people were, he fully understood the intricacies of what he was painting, and he undertook commissions or just painted his pictures as favours.

When he retired, Thomas Chidgey painted for his own pleasure and did “lovely” pictures including Watchet harbour, the lifeboat, and the hobblers that rowed out to the ships, to unload them outside the harbour because of the tides.

Thomas Chidgey died in 1926. He lived in Severn Terrace and is buried in St Decuman’s churchyard.