Museum musings: labelling

On a recent trip to Falmouth Art Gallery to take part in an object handling course, I noticed the painting shown below hanging on one of the downstairs walls as I entered the building.

As many of my ancestors manned the lifeboats in the North West I have a keen interest in stories of shipwrecks and saved lives and this was no exception; drawing me nearer to find out more.

'Got 'em all' the painting is called, by an artist called Charles Napier Hemy. The boat in the picture is the Bob Newbon lifeboat. But more than that I cannot tell you about the dramatic story of human endeavour unfolding on the canvas. 

The label (shown above) tells us about the artist, the funders of a conservation and the fact an engraving of it was sold to raise funds for the RNLI - but it reveals nothing I am interested to know. Where is the action taking place? What is the stricken ship? Who are the men on board the lifeboat and did they, in fact, 'get them all'. Such an evocative title implies there is far more detail than is being revealed here. The Falmouth Art Gallery website reveals little more (except that the lifeboat is 'shown returning through the storm after a successful rescue), nor does the etching taken from the picture and shown alongside it (pictured below). 

A little research on the web reveals that Hemy grew up in Newcastle then settled in Falmouth after stints in Australia and London. He was the first Falmouth artist to be elected a Royal Academician and was the finest marine artist of his generation. He had a studio in Falmouth on a boat so he could observe the sea at close quarters and make numerous studies of wave movement and shipping. His work has

I could find no more details about the painting here or of whether it was an imagined or real rescue. Perhaps the evocative title and the image itself were conjured completely as a response to HRH The Prince of Wales request for an etching to raise money for the RNLI - or is this an imagining of a known rescue of the boat?

I ws interested by the number of addiotnal questions I had and how these had not been factored into the label in this case.