In august 1938 ravilious visited the beautiful suffolk seaside town of aldeburgh there he painted a group of unusually vivid watercolours inclusing two studies of the towns idiosyncratic bathing machines and this exuberant picture of a lifeboat this craft named the abdy beauclerk after a keen yachtsman who had died twenty years earlier had been launched in may 1932 by prince albert the future george vi she went on to enjoy a long and distinguished career carrying out the first rescue o