Barometer | 1 August 2013

Art by the seaside

The Kent seaside resort of Herne Bay staged the parade of a urinal through the town to celebrate its connection with Marcel Duchamp, who spent a month there in 1913 and credited the place with rekindling his artistic career — a postcard to a friend declared: ‘I am not dead. I am in Herne Bay.’ Some other artists and their favoured English seaside resorts: — J.M.W. Turner frequently visited Margate for inspiration, after first being sent there as an 11-year-old boy. — John Constable lived in Brighton between 1824 and 1828. — Vincent van Gogh taught at a small boarding school in Ramsgate in 1876, from where he wrote to his brother Theo about helping the children to build sandcastles on the beach. — L.S. Lowry did not spend all his time in Salford. Berwick-upon-Tweed has established a Lowry trail which visits such sights as the holiday house which Lowry once nearly bought.