The Island, Marsden by Jennie Moulding Ireland, South Shields Museum & Art Gallery
Jennie Moulding Ireland (died 1945)
The Island, Marsden
Oil on canvas
Ireland was an amateur artist who worked in oil and watercolour. Initially based in North Shields, she later moved to South Shields. She submitted a number of works to the Artists of the Northern Counties exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle in 1913, 1942, 1944 and 1945.
Ireland has painted a summer view across to the tidal island knows as the ‘Velvet Beds’ which lies a the northern end of Marsden Bay in South Shields. Tynemouth Priory can just be glimpsed on the headland in the left background. The island’s name derived from lush grasses that used to grow there, which are captured in Ireland’s richly-coloured painting. More recently, the island has become much barer and this together with its hump like shape, had led to the other name of ‘Camel Island’. The name ‘Velvet Beds’ is now commonly used to refer to the whole northern section of the bay.
