Photo: PZ134, Christopher Wood, 1930. Courtesy of the Towner Art Gallery.

Grabbing her telescope and not forgetting to shiver her timbers, Liza Laws hornpiped to Eastbourne to check out the Towner's latest show.

All At Sea, a collection of maritime art is being exhibited at the Towner Art Gallery until April, 2004.

The building housing the paintings was built in 1776 for the vicar of Eastbourne, the house became known as the Manor House and its gardens as Manor Gardens in 1797. Manor House was purchased as an art gallery in 1922 and has remained so since.

In its original bequest of 22 paintings was Wreck at Boulogne by Thomas Bush Hardy. It has remained at the gallery ever since and is just one of the contrasting paintings at the exhibition. This is one of the more traditional pieces along with another of Hardy’s, ‘Seascape.’

Photo: Aspects of Submarines, Eric Ravilious, 1941. Courtesy of the Towner Art Gallery.

"The museum has over 4000 paintings upstairs, there are some that people have expected to see that we haven’t displayed," said Charlie Batchelor, Exhibitions & Marketing Co-ordinator at the gallery.

"But we wanted to focus predominantly on the sea and create a fresher approach with a mixture of mediums."

Ranging from the 18th century to the present day, the exhibition explores Britain as an island state and helps explain why the sea features heavily within the landscape tradition of British art.

There is such a wide range of different artists from different centuries exhibited alongside each other, each with a fascination of the sea, an element that cannot be subdued by man. These extremities of weather often evoke artist’s interests.

Photo: Sailing Ship (painted on the back of a calendar), Alfred Wallis. Courtesy of the Towner Art Gallery.

One of the highlights is Paul Nash’s painting of a solitary figure on the concrete sea defences at Dymchurch. Charlie said: "This has to be one of my favourites, people look at it and they recognise exactly where it was painted, it’s not far from Kent, a personal relationship between man and nature is explored, it is unusual for Nash to paint figures."

One of the more striking pieces is an abstract painting by well-known local artist, Harold Mockford and was purchased in 1958 by former curator William Gere.

At the time, Gere was absolutely berated for buying such an outrageous piece and now it is one of the gallery’s favourites.

Another artist with a strong connection to Eastbourne is Eric Ravilious; the museum houses many of his works. "It is his Centenary at the moment, so most of our pieces are in the Imperial War Museum where he has an exhibition," said Charlie.

Photo: Sea Gate, Alan Davie, 1960. Courtesy of the Towner Art Gallery.

In a side room, tucked away from the main gallery is some photography. There are four large pictures by Thomas Joshua Cooper, huge frames of the sea. Two were taken from Beachy Head, while the other two were taken from the exact opposite spot in France.

"They are wonderful, if you look at them long enough, they almost move," said Charlie.

Bill Brandt’s work was recently in the Sunday Times magazine and they printed one of the photos that the Towner Gallery is currently exhibiting. Again, they are photos taken at Beachy Head; they are retrospective and abstract and include a naked woman lying across the pebbles, quite intriguing.

So diverse is the range of work displayed at the Towner Gallery, that it would be impossible to do the whole exhibition justice, without writing a book…it is highly recommended.