I was 11 years old when my dad began work on the world’s largest floating gallery. This 24,500-tonne exhibition space was the flagship of the Brittany Ferries fleet, MV Bretagne, and following its launch in 1989, the ship carried more than 15 million passengers. They were all treated to the work of my father, the Scottish artist Alexander Goudie, who had been commissioned to decorate its entire interior, creating more than 300 original artworks.
For 35 years this extravagantly decorated ship sailed between the UK, France, Ireland and Spain, building up an incredibly loyal (predominantly British) clientele who, year after year, savoured the experience of being surrounded by fine works of art, not your typical cross-channel drudgery.
In recent years Bretagne crossed the channel twice each day from Portsmouth to St Malo, but in November it made its last voyage. This month, however, a new vessel, Saint-Malo, comes into service and hundreds of my father’s paintings have been transferred on board for a new permanent exhibition. The story gets a new chapter.
Although born in Scotland in 1933, Alexander Goudie was Breton by marriage. My mother grew up in southern Brittany and every summer we spent two months visiting my grandparents in the fishing port of Loctudy.
While I played on the beach my dad painted tirelessly. Over three decades, following his first visit in 1959, he filled sketchbooks and canvases, painting the portrait of his adoptive homeland. For this reason, when Brittany Ferries decided to decorate its new flagship, it entrusted the job to my father, an outsider who understood the colour and character of Brittany as well as any local.
The French naval architects made regular visits to our home in Glasgow where, over large whiskies and long dinners, they discussed the ship’s interiors. As a boy I shared their growing excitement. Bretagne was being assembled before my eyes, pieced together from sketches of the entrance hall, restaurant, bars, along with swatches of curtains, carpets and granite flooring. My dad studied the plans, always searching for spaces where paintings could be installed.
For two years he then worked in his studio, creating hundreds of artworks that filled our house to bursting point. The ferry’s designers had asked him to provide a few paintings for key locations on board, but they hadn’t counted upon my father’s appetite for a grand project.
For Dad this was an opportunity to distil decades of painting into a single work of art: a ship that would be his love letter to Brittany. And to fulfil this ambition he was prepared to invest far more time, energy and passion than was reasonable for the modest fee that he was being paid. The company directors were, at least initially, carried along by his creative enthusiasm.
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Brittany Ferries was founded in 1973 as a farmers’ cooperative shipping artichokes across the Channel and Bretagne was the first vessel it built. It wanted it to be a riposte to all those uninspiring car transporters operated by the competition.
In the tradition of the great French liners such as Normandie (which was built in the same Breton shipyard, Chantiers de l’Atlantique in St Nazaire) an artist was going to work in close collaboration with the naval architects. At first the designers were delighted with my father’s ideas; then they were overwhelmed and eventually, when my dad’s imagination ran wild, they became alarmed.
As a family we had travelled by ferry from Plymouth to Roscoff enough times to know what made for a good or bad crossing. And it wasn’t just the weather: it was the environment. My dad’s vision for Bretagne was an interior that would immerse passengers within the spectacle of their destination.
Dad wanted paintings in every public room and corridor, he wanted art to feature in each of the 376 cabins and throughout the crew’s quarters. After he had designed cabin blinds, shower curtains, wallpaper, individual pieces of furniture and a concept for carpeting the entire vessel with an evocation of the seabed, the architects finally decided they had to rein him in.
However, by this point, Dad had taken control of the ship’s interior decor. Stacked along the walls of our Glasgow home were delicious watercolours of seafood and Breton produce envisaged for the restaurant, a space regularly described as the most elegant dining room afloat; the “Gwenn-ha-du” bar was going to be lined with murals featuring the black and white national flag and traditional costumes that generate so much Breton pride; the cafeteria would display semi-abstract paintings, conveying the colour and delight of summer spent on the Atlantic coast. But the entrance hall would be the pièce de résistance.
As a boy I had often accompanied my father to the religious festivals that regularly take place throughout Brittany. Dad would fill a sketchbook, drawing the processions, Breton bagpipers and dancers performing a lively circular “gavotte’’.
This was the visual fanfare he wanted passengers to encounter as they boarded Bretagne. He conceived a mural illustrating the gavotte for the entrance hall balcony, an image that would surround you just like the dance itself. The mural was full of colour and incidental detail. A portrait of the managing director featured in the crowd — and even I made an appearance singing my heart out.
But a frieze wasn’t enough. Dad wanted passengers to walk across a carpet representing fields of wheat and the waves of the Atlantic. Above their heads a huge circular light would evoke seagulls gliding across a summer sky. He even tested out the concept by building a cardboard maquette of the foyer, illuminated with a torch from above.
I remember being awestruck when I peered into this model and spied additional artworks; a long wooden sculpture carved with a Breton harvest scene, and another huge mural illustrating the market in Pont l’Abbé, where we shopped every Saturday morning.
In the final painting, this composition featured one conspicuous figure: Monsieur Thomas, our friendly potato seller. He was depicted with his characteristic sideburns and hands clasped behind his back. Once the ship was in service, countless passengers wandering through the real Pont l’Abbé market would recognise him from the painting and approach to say hello.
On the launch day of Bretagne in July 1989, I remember the new flagship of the Brittany Ferries fleet gleaming in its freshly painted livery. The vessel itself, however, was nothing more than a hull of steel; it was the artworks exhibited along the walls and corridors of the interior that provided her with soul.
During the ceremony it took at least four attempts for the champagne bottle to smash against the hull, christening the ferry. Superstitious sailors didn’t like the omen but for 35 years Bretagne continued to ply the Channel.
The decoration of Bretagne was an epic project. Few British artists have been tasked with such a challenge or would have been able to produce so many ambitious artworks in a variety of styles and mediums in such a short time.
It was my dad’s crowning achievement. But for me, since the very start, Bretagne was simply part of the family. As a 12-year-old I was taken to St Nazaire to see the ship under construction.
The work I have undertaken as a professional painter, documenting the construction of the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers on the Clyde, owes its inspiration to that first impactful encounter with shipbuilding.
My young children, who never met their grandfather, were introduced to him through his work on board; whenever we opened the door to the owner’s suite (the “Goudie’’ cabin), we were greeted by his self-portrait, which hangs on the wall. My French cousins worked as chefs on board and my brother, who played for a season as a pianist in the piano bar, met his future wife one evening while tinkling the ivories.
The ship’s retirement has left a gap in our lives, and the same is true of those passengers and crews who came to hold Bretagne in such affection. But the spirit and character of the vessel will live on.
When Brittany Ferries announced the retirement of its veteran vessel, it was overwhelmed by passengers inquiring after the fate of the paintings my father had created. The executives overseeing the process joked to me that they thought they might have to establish a counselling programme for passengers and crew who felt bereft at the ship’s demise. Instead, they decided to transplant the artworks on to a new vessel, Saint-Malo.
That task has been a challenge. Saint-Malo is one of three newly constructed sister ships and was not tailor-designed around the original decorative vision conceived in 1989 by my father and the naval architects.
When engineers began to explore how the murals and paintings could be transferred they found that many works needed careful restoration to remove years of grime, while several others had been so forcefully squeezed or screwed into position they couldn’t be removed at all.
Nonetheless, Brittany Ferries persevered. More than 150 of my father’s artworks will now find a second home on the sea. I was invited to discuss the curation of Saint-Malo’s decor and provide an insight into the materials and inspiration that lay behind the images my father created 35 years ago. With sensitivity and careful consideration a layout was devised that will showcase as many of the original paintings as possible.
The ship will be christened on January 31, sailing from Portsmouth to St Malo. Once on board, passengers will encounter many familiar paintings in the restaurants, lounges and corridors. A dedicated gallery will tell the story of my father’s relationship with Brittany and Brittany Ferries, while sharp-eyed regulars will discover unseen works that had previously been hung in the private crew quarters and first-class cabins of Bretagne. The floating art gallery will set sail again. Bon voyage, Saint-Malo!
brittany-ferries.co.uk…Read more by Lachlan Goudie