SARAH LOUISA KILPACK
(London, 1839 – 1909) 

After the Storm 

Signed, lower left: SL Kilpack

Oil on paper laid on board
10 x 10 inches (25 x 25 cm)

Sarah Louisa Kilpack is best known for her portrayals of stormy coastal scenes of the Channel Islands. Born in 1839, she was the daughter of Georgina and Thomas Kilpack, a tobacconist whose shop was below the family’s living quarters in Covent Garden. A talented musician and budding artist, Sarah became a professional pianist after attending the Royal Academy of Music. Her musical ability was such that her earnings from playing concerts enabled her to travel the country and paint. She visited the Channel Islands frequently, where she drew inspiration from the water and wind that buffeted the coasts and the cliffs.[i] Her family became dependent on her income after the death of her mother in 1863, and it is thought that Kilpack settled in Jersey around these years to paint full-time. 

After the Storm perfectly exemplifies Kilpack’s paintings in oil, which typically portray rocky outcrops, rough seas with turbulent waters, dramatic skies, and tall rugged cliffs. Our painting stands out in her oeuvre as an example of the aftermath of a storm. A ship has here run aground, its sails battered and hanging limply on the mast while debris from the wreck is strewn about on the rocks. The image of abandoned ship contrasts poignantly with the quieting waves and the sunlight that just begins to break through the dark clouds. Sea gulls enjoy a respite from the storm as they glide over the sea at left. The composition of our roundel provides a calm counterpoint to Kilpack’s more energetic scenes of the seas in motion rather than at rest while still capturing the destructive force of nature (Figs. 1-2).

Kilpack exhibited her works throughout her lifetime—contributing two of her Guernsey paintings to the eleventh Annual Exhibition of the Society of Female Artists in London in 1867, and two more to the exhibition at the British Institute in the same year.[ii]  As a member of the Society of Female Artists in London, she exhibited a total of 119 paintings throughout her life.[iii] She died from breast cancer in 1909. Her paintings today are found in the Chepston Museum, the Guernsey Museum & Art Gallery, and the Jersey Museum and Art Gallery. Kilpack is celebrated locally in Jersey, and to mark the 150th anniversary of her birth, the Jersey Post issued a commemorative set of stamps reproducing several of her paintings of the Channel Islands in 1989 (Fig. 3).

[i] Sara Gray, Gray’s Dictionary of British Women Artists, Cambridge, 2009, p. 160.

[ii] Algernon Graves, A dictionary of artists who have exhibited works in the principal London exhibitions from 1760 to 1893, London, 1895, p. 160.

[iii] Gray, Gray’s Dictionary, p. 160.