Description

A pencil sketch of a ship passing the English Channel by Newton Bragge.

Newton was not known for his artistic skill during his lifetime. He was known simply as an ‘invalid’ son of an entrepreneurial cabinet maker. Due to people's prejudice and lack of belief in his ability, Newton was not encouraged to pursue his passion. Instead, he drew on old receipts, business letters, and other scraps of paper.
Newton followed his father into the family business and sketched as a hobby from his window at West Hill Villa in Hastings Old Town. Over 16 years, Newton produced over 180 sketches and documented the changing seascape of Britain from sail to steam.

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Community curation: One day in the store, I stumbled across Newton’s sketches, packed precariously into an ordinary brown envelope. Whilst removing them from the envelope, I was instantly struck by the detail and care that had been put into each drawing, with Newton documenting the ship, the day, and the year he had sketched them.

Although I was happy to find such beautiful work hidden away, I was also sad how these works had been stored in a regular envelope, almost as an afterthought. After purchasing protective covers for each sketch, photographing them on both sides and placing them safely into a new box, I became invested in finding out more about Newton and his story.

Following weeks of searching in newspaper archives, census records and family trees, I found pieces of Newton's story. He was born to Ann and Nathanial Bragge in 1842 in St. Leonards, but grew up in West Hill Villa, where only 32 years earlier artist William Turner had stayed for a short while to paint his south-east series. After leaving school, aged 19, Newton followed his father  to become a cabinet maker, joining a sizable business at 103 High St, which employed five men and four boys. Newton pursued this career until 1869, when he retired and started sketching. Newton never married, and his art and story stayed hidden for over a hundred years before being seen publicly for the first time at the exhibition “Stored Out of Sight: Hidden History of Disabled People” at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery in 2023.

- Jack Guy, Curating for Change Fellow, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery