BEST OF CORNWALL 2020 Marianne Stokes, née Priendlsberger 1855 - 1927 Lantern Light, 1888 Oil on canvas, 82.5 x 102 cm Penlee House Gallery & Museum Purchased by private treaty from Mr & Mrs Allan Amey with assistance from The Art Fund, The MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Friends of Penlee A brief and incomplete history of ... art and artists in Cornwall By Andrea Breton Cornwall has always appealed to the creative type; a land of mists and megaliths, it combines a wide variety of landscape, from perfectly sanded coves to dramatic cliffs and breakers; bleak, haunted moors to lush vegetal valleys. There are picturesque harbours and grand country houses set in vast acreages. There are impressive landmarks from the past such as Tintagel Castle, St Michael’s Mount and more standing stones and Neolithic sites than you can shake a stick at. They exist happily alongside the present day futuristic domes of Eden, the stately grey bulk of Tate St Ives, old Mine chimneys (sensibly bestowed with World Heritage status) and the spoil heaps of the clay pits near St Austell. 35 BEST OF CORNWALL 2020 However there is more to Cornwall’s appeal than It was clear that luck landmarks. It is the geographical distance to the rest of was needed. Fortunately, the England; the quirk of geology which makes Cornwall Victorian age was coming somewhat longer than it is wide. Surrounded by the sea, and with it the age of steam it gives the county an all enveloping bright light, allegedly powered travel and the artists’ a couple of lux higher than the mainland. A sub-tropical colony. To help set the scene, climate, which generates almost as much rain as Swansea we must look to one of the (the rain capital of the country) results in palm trees and finest artists this country has succulents and magnificent rainbows. produced: Joseph Mallord A BEGINNING William Turner. Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851) Turner was revolutionising Today Cornwall may have more artists than anywhere St Mawes at the Pilchard Season, 1812 outside of London, but it wasn’t always so. Time was, Tate topography, from simply the journey to the Duchy was long and uncomfortable; involving capturing the local detail of an area, into a dynamic exploration of wagons, turnpike roads and rough tracks – an excursion from London place and people. William Bernard Cooke and his brother George, to Plymouth took nearly 24 hours, and from Plymouth to Penzance were engravers turned publishers. Because of the wars, cost of a further three days. A painter was not likely to traverse the country travel and discomfort, people didn’t travel very far from their homes. so uncomfortably, only to be faced with the resident Cornish. Before The Cooke brothers wanted to exploit the public’s curiosity about their transformation into the doughty, indomitable heroic the landscape of their own mariners of many Victorian canvases, they had a dubious country, with a series of reputation based on lurid stories of ship wrecking, or topographical prints. dangerous, grimy mining. Picturesque Views on the Before the introduction of the railway from the mid Southern Coast of England was 1800s, Cornwall was travelled by those with more business an ambitious undertaking, a than beauty on their minds and there was a tremendous series of 48 engraved prints, amount of business to be conducted. Fish were plentiful and 32 vignettes accompanied by the pilchard industry was booming. Tin and copper were descriptive text. The Cooke being mined and exported around the world. Thanks to brothers wanted Turner who William Cookworthy’s discovery of china clay near St Austell, George Cooke was already well known. millions of tonnes were Engraved from a drawing by JMW Turner He was happy to work in Lands End, Cornwall 1814 dug to supply kaolin Tate the commercial sector, for a to both the paper and ceramic suitable fee and took to the road the summer of 1811. The whole trip, industry. The Cornish were a nation down from Dorset, along the coast to Land’s End and up to the Bristol of manufacturers and exporters channel, took about eight weeks. He filled a great many sketchbooks, and the rest of the world was and despite a most acrimonious falling out with the Cooke brothers eager to buy. and abandoning the full series, produced not only watercolours and sketches for that commission and others, but also oil paintings which Did all this enterprise produce were displayed in his own gallery, such as St Mawes at the Pilchard artists of national standing? Well Season, 1812 now in Tate Britain, London. not many. In the late eighteenth century there was the historical THE VICTORIANS and portrait painter John Opie. Turner never returned to Cornwall, but where he led in muddy A man of enquiring mind and boots others followed. In considerably more comfort. In 1859 the John Opie 1761 – 1807 keen intellect, he escaped the railway bridge across the Tamar to Saltash was completed, part Sir David Wilkie dependable drudgery of his of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway project. In (1785 - 1841) c.1805 carpentry apprenticeship due to the the years that followed more and more track was laid in Cornwall, with kind permission of the recognition of his talent by a local Royal Institution of Cornwall finishing off with a branch line to St Ives in 1877. This metal artery doctor. Opie was born at Trevellas, opened up a whole new world for artists. They could now pack their St Agnes, a beautiful spot near Truro, moving to London with his mentor paints (watercolours mostly, much easier to manage with heavy to progress his career. There, many of the great men and women of his luggage) ride down, paint all summer then back up in autumn for day, most notably in the artistic and literary professions, were waiting London and the Academy exhibitions. to have their likenesses taken. He was known as ‘the Cornish Wonder’, Artists also had the benefit of two seminal publications, giving on and Opie certainly did paint a tremendous amount of portraits. Painted the one hand a fund of inspiration, and on the other practical advice. originally for the grand county families, you can see his work in places Firstly Robert Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England (or such as the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro; look out for Sir David the Drolls, Traditions and Superstitions of Old Cornwall) published in Wilkie painted in 1805, where the sitter unusually covers his mouth 1865, gave splendid romantic narratives to those topographical views. with his hand. A Handbook for Travellers in Devon and Cornwall by John Murray, THE TURN OF TURNER first published in 1851 and updated when the railway came, was the For Cornwall the wheel of fortune forever turns, and the successes Lonely Planet Guide of it’s time and equally indispensable. Included of all Cornwall’s industries faltered in the nineteenth century. The within was not just the usual fare of towns and hotels but also tips Napoleonic wars affected the pilchard fishing with England’s trade for sketching locations. Trebarwith Strand, on the north Cornish coast embargos to France and Spain, the main importers. Cheap tin imported just a mile or so down from Tintagel, was mentioned as ‘deservedly from far off climes helped put a dent in the South West’s monopoly. a favourite spot with artists; for not only is it intrinsically beautiful 36 BEST OF CORNWALL 2020 as coast-scene, but it offers facilities for the study of the sea in its greatest purity, the billows being unsullied by earthly particles held in suspension.’ OF ROCKS AND SEA In 1843, writer and art critic John Ruskin had written Modern Painters, a hugely influential treatise which asked artists to paint with a ‘truth to nature’. This meant rejecting the popular practice of creating romantic compositions and relying instead on painstaking observation of nature. Couple this with Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species of 1859 and artists began exploring an interest in rocks. Cornwall has rocks and dramatic coastal areas in abundance. Kynance Cove on the Lizard, was painted methodically, intricately and with a geological intensity. The area is now owned by The William Holman Hunt (1827 - 1910) National Trust, go and see these giants of granite, the sea sucking Asparagus Island 1860. Private Collection and moaning at their sandy feet, sheep grazing on their wind-tossed Painters, along with poets and writers had done much to establish tops. You will be in the company of artists such as William Holman the association of the coast with patriotism and defence of this Hunt who painted Asparagus Island in 1860. But there were artists ‘sceptered isle’. These artists painted national identity, pride, wealth who were looking further out to sea, intent on capturing life on the and politics. For Cornwall, this heralds the transformation of the Cornish wave. Of these marine painters one of the best known was the British sailor from knave to knight of the sea. painter Charles Napier Hemy. THE FIRST ART COLONIES IN CORNWALL Although born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Hemy moved to Falmouth Two art colonies sprang up which helped explore and promote in 1881 and remained until his death. He was a keen sailor, and this idea: the small fishing port of Newlyn, and on the other side of owned two boats which served as floating studios. From these he the peninsular in St Ives. The Newlyn School came into existence in would paint, including Along shore fishermen of 1890, painted off St around about the 1880s, and lasted up until the 1940s.