Albert Wainwright

Robin Hood’s Bay
1930
Watercolour on paper
25.3 x 35.4 cm
Purchased with the aid of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1982. Photography Diane Feather

Robin Hood’s Bay, near Whitby, was where Barbara Hepworth spent many childhood holidays. She recalled: ‘I was always in a state of great excitement… I crept out at dawn to collect stones and seaweeds, and to paint and draw.’

Albert Wainwright was born in Castleford, in the Wakefield district, and was a classmate of Henry Moore. Photographs and letters in Wakefield’s archive show that the two men were close friends as soldiers during the First World War, writing beautifully illustrated letters to one another.

In 1920 Wainwright received his first one-man exhibition at Leeds City Art Gallery, aged just 22.