Mid Century Oil Painting of a Fishing Boat at St Mary's, Isles of Scilly, Signed Arthur W. Gay

A small, bright study of a fishing boat under sail at St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly, painted by the Bristol artist Arthur Wilson Gay (1901 to 1958) and signed Arthur W. Gay in the lower left corner. The boat leans into a fresh breeze under cream and terracotta sails, her navy hull trimmed in yellow, while a white motor boat noses in from the right and the low sandy shore of the island runs along the horizon, dotted with little white cottages. The water has that clear Scilly turquoise, broken by white horses, beneath a soft bank of summer cloud, and the whole picture has the brisk, happy energy of a good day on the water.

Gay was elected to the Bristol Savages, the city's long established artists' society, in 1928, and spent more than thirty years working in the studios of the Bristol printers E. S. and A. Robinson. He is best known today as a portrait painter, with work held by Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, the University of Bristol Theatre Collection and the Peace Museum, so his coastal scenes turn up far less often.

Painted in oil on canvas board, it measures 26 x 19 cm including its frame. On the back, the original pencil inscription gives the title, Fishing Boat, St Mary's, with a price of £3 3s 0d, three guineas in old money, which suggests it was offered at an exhibition sometime before decimalisation in 1971.

The textured gilt frame is ridged in tiers, with a soft green showing through the gold where decades of handling have worn it. There are small rubs to the gilt at the outer corners and the inner corner joints have opened very slightly. The backing paper is torn in places along the top edge and the original twisted wire hanger is still in place. The paint surface is bright, with a couple of tiny specks in the sky that you would need to look closely to find.

It is a lovely size for a bathroom shelf, a deep windowsill or a bedside table, and it looks wonderful propped against a wall with a few shells and some sea glass, as you can see in our photographs. It would make a thoughtful present for anyone who has holidayed on Scilly, or for the sailor in your life who has everything except a boat that never needs scraping.