62.9 × 92.7 cm (24.8 × 36.5 in)
Tate
Girls Running, Walberswick Pier is an oil on canvas painting by the English impressionist artist Philip William Steer (1860–1942).[1]
Dated 1894, the painting was displayed in two exhibitions at the Goupil Gallery that year, in February and April, entered simply as Girls Running. Offered at a price of £45 at the artist’s first solo exhibition, it was purchased by Sir Augustus Daniel in April 1894.[1][2] It remained in his ownership until his death in 1950, following which his widow donated it, along with the rest of his art collection, to the Tate Gallery in 1951.[1]
Steer, who trained at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris between 1882 and 1884, was inspired by the French Impressionist painters. He became a frequent visitor to friends in Walberswick, Suffolk where he painted the Impressionist seascapes and beach scenes that are considered to be his finest works.[3] Girls Running, Walberswick Pier demonstrates the Impressionists’ influence on Steer as he captures the middle-class figures at the end of the pier and the two girls running towards the artist against a backdrop of sea and sky in the warm late-afternoon sunlight.[1]