Walter Dexter redux

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Where to find locations, where to find inspiration.. frequent questions and I hope by starting this thread early in this project I might make some suggestions where others might find their own answers to these questions.

I've never just looked to photographers for inspiration, I find a lot in the works of painters - both landscape and portrait. A notable local painter was Walter Dexter (1876-1958) and several of his landscapes are in the collection of the local council and town museum. I can remember seeing one version of this view at the Registry office last year.

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Lynn from the South West, Norfolk

Dexter painted this view on several occasions. The detail of the townscape changes as buildings are developed or demolished. However there are several consistencies - the general viewpoint, high tide and fluffy cloud skies.

First up was finding the location where Dexter stood to sketch/paint. A combination of Google Earth and the OS overlay for Bing Maps was handy here. I identified several key buildings in the town that are extant today and looked at how they relate to each other. In this case the churches of St Margaret (the twin minster towers in the centre of the painting), St Nicholas (to its the left) and the Granary tower (to the left of St Nicholas). That quickly narrowed down the point on the river bank that would give me the right angles and by dropping the altitude of the view point on Google Earth and pitching the angle of view relative to the horizon it confirmed that the general sweep of the river was about right from this position.

Today was my first opportunity to take a few shots and see what I can get. Perishing cold so I wasn't hanging about, the tide is far too low and the light is nowhere near right. But it does look like I've got the right spot and it still offers a pleasant view of the town.



Next is waiting and revisiting to try and catch better light and better skies in combination with a high tide.
 
Cool idea. I would have never thought to use the tech like you have. Looks the right spot to me.

Good luck going forwards.


Gaz
 
Cool idea. I would have never thought to use the tech like you have. Looks the right spot to me.
I know I could draw lines on an OS map, but the Google Earth aerial imagery gives a better indication of where the river flows. The OS representations of mud banks and tidal limits (particularly the inside of the river bend) are rather idealised

I'm beginning to realise that Dexter greatly exaggerated the heights (and general prominence) of principal buildings. And it's something he repeatedly does with this view in all the versions he sketches/paints over the years. I think I'm going to have to apply a vertical stretch/transform to the town elements in the scene to try and replicate this. But Dexter is selective about it. Take the minster of St Margaret's where he's vertically stretched and overall enlarged the main twin towers but he's left the stump of the former tower (collapsed in C18, to the right of the twin towers) with more realistic proportions and a minimal impact on the town skyline.
 
The tide is coming back into line with the light I need, although still several hours too early to match Dexter's light. This was about 1230, and I think I need the light Dexter painted is closer to 1600 - just tipping over from late afternoon into evening. Forgot my crib sheet so I was standing too far to the right. On the right-hand edge of my frame you can see the tower of Greyfriar's and in Dexter's scene just clips it's horizontal position in the frame - although I think the river has changed since his time, the rising foreground at the right is where the river flood bank has been raised to protect the houses beyond it.

 
Having tried to retake some photographs of my own after thirty years I appreciate your struggles finding the correct viewpoint. I find myself wondering if a longer lens might give a closer approximation to Dexter's view of the scene. If it's possible to get further back to make that work, of course.
 
I think he just exaggerated the presence of the buildings in the scene - something that's very easy for a painter to achieve.

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The pink marker points to my shooting location, the yellow marker shows the direction of the view towards the Minster. I can try going further back and standing on the Free Bridge, it's not the same bridge that was there when Dexter painted his picture but it's on the same alignment and just a few yards to one side of the old bridge piers.
 
There's probably a combination of a changing river bank and artistic licence at play. I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on with this.
 
There's probably a combination of a changing river bank and artistic licence at play. I'm looking forward to seeing how you get on with this.
The tide varies too, today was a 4.7m but come Thursday it will be 5.3m at 1631 - which if the weather and light holds should be closer to Dexter, but it's still a little early in the year I think.

Spring tides are over 7m, so I could get another 2.5m of water height beyond today's tide on the right day - but these early morning or late evening rather than the afternoon.

To get the reflections is also going to need everything to be just right, catching slack water with no wind.
 
It'll be tough to get everything to come together. So long as you can visit regularly you'll be in with a chance though. Good luck.
 
Having tried to retake some photographs of my own after thirty years I appreciate your struggles finding the correct viewpoint. I find myself wondering if a longer lens might give a closer approximation to Dexter's view of the scene. If it's possible to get further back to make that work, of course.
Ok, tried going back as far as the bridge as I found a reference to an article where Dexter discusses the favourable view of the townscape from the bridge.

I can conclusively say he didn't paint the view from the bridge!



There are some key alignments in the original paintings and sketches. The Granary (yellow) is to the left of the spire of St Nicholas (green). Standing on the bridge the spire is behind the granary. Fortunately the building in front of the Granary (Marriott's Warehouse) is extant and the key relationship between the left-hand edge of the Granary and the Warehouse (boxed in white) very narrowly defines the angle of view.

Standing a bit further back from my last shot and higher up the flood bank I've tried to balance this alignment with the curve of the river. I may need to be a few yards further left but it's coming together. Wrong tide and wrong time of day, but it was a bitter wind and the sun was playing with the clouds - I had a meeting to get to and I thought I was never going to get a patch of sunlight across the face of St Margaret's! The extra height smooths out the foreground, previously I was much lower, just to the right of the visible outfall.

 
The higher viewpoint has certainly improved things. (y)
 
Beneath us the wide and swift tidal river, pearl and umber, running between huge grassy banks, or at low water exposing shelves of treacherous mud, glistening and iridescent. Less than a mile away, where the river bends to the left, the town outstretched beside the almost deserted harbour, the long line of low buildings broken by towers, spires and the distant masts of shipping - also less happily by the disproportionate bulk of modern warehouses. That is Lynn at a glance; a view exceptional and arresting.

Walter Dexter (1932), King's Lynn Library Quarterly

I've found this piece, written of the view from the Cut Bridge, in A Portrait of Walter Dexter An Enigmatic Man by Charlotte Paton (2014). The Cut Bridge of 1932 has been long replaced by the Free Bridge shown in the map already given above, the current bridge alignment is within 20' of the old.



This is the scene taken from the eastern end of the present bridge. The spire of St Nicholas is peeking above the Granary shows the alignment is off compared to the paintings, so whilst Dexter admired the view from the bridge he must have painted it from bank downstream.
 
This is another local scene from Dexter, the parish church of All Saint's, East Winch.



With this one I was reasonably certain of the location Dexter painted from, but the passage of time has changed the view dramatically.



The side of the main road has been planted with a deep shelter belt, this pushes the edge of the field 30' in from the road. Even hard up against the shelter belt I can't get the angle on the church so my assumption is that Dexter painted either from the road, or just inside the field close to the road. The hedge between the church and the field has also been allowed to grow substantially, obscuring the view of the main body of the church. Once again, Dexter seems to be exaggerating the vertical scale for artistic effect.

I think this sketch by Dexter is also of the church at East Winch, it hints at the more open nature of the area (and quieter roads) when Dexter was painting.

 
What a fascinating idea. I rather like your redo of the church, similar light as to the painting (perhaps more golden in yours) and it would seem the trees have grown!

I'll follow this with interest.
 
Caught a good tide today, wind and cloud meant the light was fleeting with a constantly changing cloudscape. The wind precluded any reflections on the water. Things weren't helped by a survey vessel using the opportunity of slack water to run up river taking water samples all the way up to the bridge - right across my shot..



Interesting coffin clouds in this one.
 
A rather grey day, but another Dexter inspired subject.



Dexter hints at a blue sky and his shadows suggest strong light. Neither of these things was happening today. He painted a line of thin poplars slightly screening the farm buildings, today the trees are somewhat wider. I think a repeat visit in a few weeks to catch the trees with just the thinnest smattering of spring green foliage will have a pleasant effect without masking the buildings. I may also need to be standing a little further to the right. Once again, it seems Dexter may have captured the late afternoon shadows.

 
An EDP article on walking the River Nar (link) gives a quote from Dexter, from about 1900:

Leaving the bridge with its ancient house for the bridge keeper I looked up and down the weedy, but crystal-clear stream.
I also read the tolls and found that for the payment of one halfpenny would enable me to take a pig over the bridge should I have occasion to do so.
Then by a winding drove I reached the priory. The vast gate-tower, evidently of the 15th century, standing sentinel over this silent fenny tract was most impressive, and set me wondering.
What had become of the other monastery buildings: the church, refectory, the dormitory, where were they?...
Coming away I turned for a last look at this enduring reminder of a romantic past: now deserted but guarded as it were by a row of mournful poplars.
I saw the black-hooded Augustinian monks passing to and fro within the high walled precinct, and the hinds taking the cumbersome wains [wagons] in through the massive archway. I heard across the centuries the faint echo of the monastery bells, from the grey tower above the canon’s church.
Yet it is sometimes said that Norfolk is a country without romance. Where are there ruins that could more pleasantly quicken the imagination, or speak more eloquently of inevitable change?

The remains of the old toll bridge are still there, now supporting a footbridge for the path that follows the course of the river.
 
The tide was right, the light was good.. but it just wasn't coming together with the Dexter viewpoint. So that got me looking around,

 
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