Eastbourne, from Beachy Head

Coastal landscape scenery was a persistent theme in English watercolours. Here Fripp presents a gentleman greeting a fellow traveller on horseback on Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain and, since the 17th century, a notorious suicide spot.. Along the coastline Fripp includes a series of Martello towers which were built for defence purposes between 1805 and 1812 to resist a potential invasion from Napoleon. The nation's security was again threatened in the 1850s when the French began taking advantage of steam power to strengthen the Navy. Fripp's watercolour demonstrates the importancv of the coastline, and also draws attention to the current debate about evolution which had been sparked by the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, first published in 1850.