Thames Barges at Night

Charles Pears was born in Pontefract, Yorkshire. He worked initially as a black and white artist for magazines from the late 1890s, serving as a theatrical caricaturist for Pick-Me-Up. A versatile draughtsman, he also did many posters and illustrated Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1922 and the works of Charles Dickens. During World War I he was an Official War Artist for the Admiralty, a position he repeated during World War II, and he gradually established a reputation as a sound marine painter with a strong sense of design. He was founder and first president of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. He wrote a number of books, such as From Thames to the Seine, 1910 and South Cruising from the Thames to Penzance, 1931. He exhibited widely at the Royal Academy, Fine Art Society and elsewhere and lived in London and later at St Mawes, Cornwall. Represented in the collection of the Imperial War Museum and National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.