BEST OF 2020

Marianne Stokes, née Priendlsberger 1855 - 1927 Lantern Light, 1888 Oil on canvas, 82.5 x 102 cm 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 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 St Ives, old Mine chimneys (sensibly bestowed with World Heritage status) and the spoil heaps of the clay pits near .

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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 ; 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 at the Pilchard Season, 1812 outside of , 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 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 , 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 , 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 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 , opened up a whole new world for artists. They could now pack their St Agnes, a beautiful spot near , 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 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

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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 ’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 , and on the other side of owned two boats which served as floating studios. From these he the peninsular in St Ives. The 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. The artists here Anthony lighthouse. This work can be seen, along with several other stayed locally, united by a desire to paint outside ‘en plein air‘, in the Hemy paintings, at . Pilchards 1897 is one of elements, in a naturalist style, and generally focused on the lives of the his most famous works, held in the Tate Collection in London. In it, villagers who were cheap and willing models. The artists themselves you can see the fishermen pull in the traditional Seine fishing nets, were mostly British and linked to the London art scene. In 1882 Walter heaving with fish. Although the painting took only 10 days to paint, Langley settled here, others following including and Hemy spent 14 years studying and sketching the fishermen. Norman Garstin.

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Garstin is best Birch and the continuously popular . They moved remembered for slightly further out of Newlyn, to Lamorna, and their work there is often his well loved referred to as the Lamorna group. work The Rain Over in St Ives it was a much more international bunch, who it Raineth Every came following the trend in Parisian studios (where they studied) Day 1889. This to discover rural retreats in Brittany. These artists were from all over painting can be Europe and North America and sought remote, unspoilt destinations seen at Penlee Norman Garstin (1847-1926) providing complementary space, light and subject for plein air painting. House Gallery & The Rain it Raineth Every Day, 1889 Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance Here, British marine and landscape painters, including Edward Cooke, Museum, Penzance, (nephew to the Cooke who commissioned Turner at the beginning who hold the largest collection of Newlyn School paintings in the country. of the century) James Clarke Hook and Louis Grier painted alongside The large canvas is one of the finest depictions of a soggy day out you can Scandinavian painters Anders Zorn, Helene Schjerfbeck and fleeting see and one that is largely unchanged. To this day Penzance promenade visitors the Australian Mortimer Menpes, American born James Abbott (and the unwary dog walker) is regularly drenched with unruly waves. McNeill Whister and his then student Walter Sickert. THE LEACH POTTERY, ST IVES The nineteenth century saw much change, but we move into the turbulent waters of the twentieth century. By the 1920s there had been over half a century of academic and plein air painters capturing shorelines, fishermen and beguiling urchins in large-scale, epic narratives or small scale genre scenes. However, in 1920 something rather different to painting began. St Ives does not have the natural resources of clay or wood to supply a pottery. Despite that, the artist and potter left Japan, his home of 11 years, to set up a studio pottery with his friend Shoji Hamada. A wealthy patron had offered an invitation and financial assistance, as a way of stimulating the local economy. It is still a working pottery today, (1858–1929) The Run Home 1902 with kind permission of the Royal Institution of Cornwall having had decades of potters, apprentices and students from around the world come and train in its modest premises, a tribute to Henry Scott Tuke was only associated with Newlyn for a few years, Leach‘s legacy. but had close friendships with many in the colony, which lasted after his move back to Falmouth. Tuke was an important maritime artist, It is one of the most with works such as The Run Home 1902, although he is perhaps best famous and influential studio known for his portraits and his paintings of male nudes. The fresh potteries in the UK and colours and ability to capture the feeling of natural light led to him beyond. The Leach Pottery enjoying a considerable reputation. houses a museum, which shows the original kilns, and In 1899, a display of work by Leach Stanhope and his circle. What made Forbes and his Leach such an internationally wife Elizabeth important figure for all the arts founded a School was his vision of the artist- of Art in Newlyn, and students craftsman. He revived the idea there included of a handmade simplicity and Dod and Ernest Brenard Leach combined the traditions English Procter. This country slipware with oriental heralded ideas of craftsmanship. Leach made beautiful objects, but practical and the second suited to modern needs. Stanhope Forbes (1857 – 1947) generation of Leach himself straddles the two worlds, one of the ’old guard’ of Abbey Slip, 1921 Newlyn artists St Ives artists, with their concern for plein air painting, and the new Oil on canvas, 76 x 102 cm Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance including Alfred Modernists, who chose a different way to engage and explore the © The Artist’s Estate / Bridgeman Art Library Munnings, landscape they found themselves in.

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did it start to create an impact. ‘Truth to materials’ became a rallying cry for sculptors such as and who were experimenting, allowing simplified forms to emerge rather than impose a shape. In painting work was pared down, geometric and non- figurative. Dismissed in some areas of the art world as ‘too intellectual’ the artists themselves were attempting to address a universal, spiritual truth. In the last years of the 1930s, two events took place, reflecting two of the many facets of . In 1937, at Lambe Creek on the , an extraordinary group of Surrealist artists came on holiday; whilst in 1939 artists who were at the centre of British Modernism came from Hampstead to Carbis Bay; painter and sculptor Barbara Hepworth. A SURREALIST SPREE

Alfred Wallis (1855 - 1945) The surrealist holiday was a brief but engaging episode, bringing The Blue Ship circa 1934 Tate some of the most original painters, sculptors, writers and photographers THE DISCOVERY OF of the twentieth century to the beautiful backwaters of Cornwall. Roland In 1926 a young and handsome artist Christopher Wood, British Penrose was the artist generally credited with bringing to Britain. Lambe Creek House on the river Fal was owned by Penrose’s but part of the glamorous Parisian art world, visited St Ives. He looked brother, and lent to him in June 1937. to Picasso and Jean Cocteau in his art and showed no interest in the He brought a few friends: surrealist painters Max Ernst his new lover, English, academic tradition. He enjoyed the town however, and he painter Leonora Carrington, and artist ; photographers Lee returned in 1928 with his friend, painter Ben Nicholson. That led to a Miller and ; surrealist poets Édouard Mesens and Paul Éluard and momentous, if accidental, meeting with the diminutive retired mariner Joseph Bard the writer. Alfred Wallis. Wallis had taken up painting when his wife died, keeping his memories of the past alive in household paint and bits of board These dazzling exotics didn’t stay, leaving behind only photographs and card. He painted St Ives and all that surrounded it, the sea, boats of their summer spree, which delightfully you can see at Falmouth and lighthouse. In The Blue Ship 1934, the ship dwarfs the rest of the Art Gallery. However this was not the only surrealism in Cornwall, the painting, squashing the pier and lighthouse to nubs, parts of the board idea of releasing the creative potential of the unconscious mind was left unpainted. explored in the work of two artists; Ithell Colquhoun and John Tunnard. The immediacy of his untutored paintings, labelled naïve or Ithell Colquhoun had been associated with the fledgling surrealist primitive, struck a chord with a generation of artists who looked to get movement in London, and had exhibited jointly with back to the idea of translating life experiences into paint. In Wood and before moving to Cornwall in the 1940s. Colquhoun must have been a

Christopher Wood (1901 – 1930) rather interesting and flamboyant John Tunnard The Fisherman’s Farewell 1928 Tol Pedn 1942 figure in the small villages in Tate Tate © The Estate of John Tunnard West Cornwall where she lived, Nicholson’s paintings, they had been experimenting with painting in a first in Lamorna then Paul, near Penzance. She was fiercely passionate ‘handmade’, naïve style and subject matter. After meeting Wallis, they about magic, and held a empathic (although presumably platonic) adopted the motifs of the boats and lighthouses. In Christopher Wood’s relationship with the standing stones of Cornwall, which is particularly painting The Fisherman’s Farewell 1928 you can see both motifs behind rich in prehistoric sites, especially West Cornwall, where it is hard to go the fisherman, apparently based on Nicholson, his first wife Winifred for any sort of a walk around there without encounters with a stone and their son Jake. circle, standing stone or burial chamber. In her painting Landscape Modernism in its simplest form was a rejection of the past. If the with Antiquities (Lamorna) of 1950 you can see an entirely fictitious past wasn’t an appropriate model for the present, then new ways of arrangement of ancient and sacred sites in and around Lamorna. The painting, with new forms needed to be created. Innovation, along painting is held by the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. with a belief in progress and even in the idea of a social utopia was John Tunnard was only loosely associated with the Surrealists, the way forward. It had been developed in art, architecture and design however his paintings with strange, freeform shapes, cut with a in Russia, Europe and America since the 1850s, but was rather more metallic edge, can be seen to echo with both the seashore, jazz and circumspect in Britain. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century natural history, all of which he was keenly interested in. He lived

39 and worked at Cadgwith Cove on the Lizard peninsula from 1930, and had as members both the plein air and modernist artists, the old guard served as a coastguard during the war. Tol-Pedn, is near to Tunnard’s and the young reactionaries. It wasn’t long before a split happened and home, and the landmarks appear to have stimulated his abstraction of the Society of Arts in Cornwall was created. the landscape. LANDSCAPE TODAY MODERNISM AND ST IVES In the wake of modernity and changing taste and fortunes of art, But we must look to the seaside town of St Ives; with the breath of artists still continue to work. The lure of the landscape is just as strong the Second World War upon it, come the Modernists. to today’s artists as it was to those painters in the nineteenth century, Ben Nicholson, his wife, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth and their although the approaches may differ hugely. In the 1970s John Miller triplets left London on the eve of the Second World War, in 1939. chose to celebrate the beauty of Cornwall in an impressionistic style, Originally they came to Carbis Bay, and stayed with their artist friends before his palette changed to bright, clear colours and simplified motifs and . They were joined by the Russian of beach, sea and sky. His work was reproduced in cards, posters and sculptor who worked in new, experimental materials such as prints and was enormously successful commercially. transparent plastic to constructivist ideas of pure form, clean lines, and Peter Freeman is a light artist based in West Cornwall. For him the lack of ornament. Because of these artists, their aims and ideals, St Ives sea and play of light between the sky and the water is a continuous became a centre for modern and abstract developments in British art. inspiration for his light sculptures and installations. He uses craft and technology skills to transform and articulate public buildings and spaces Barbara Hepworth with neon, LED, and fibre-optics. His sculpture can be seen at junction Two Forms (Divided Circle) 1969 Tate 21 on the M5 motorway, where a 13 meter column of light welcomes © Bowness you into the South West. In Penzance, he created a light work that Photo: © Tate illuminates the fifty-five-metre glass façade of the Exchange Gallery. Inspired by the colours of the sea and sky, waves of soft diffused blues and greens sinuously wind their way the length of the building. Rather than the immediate landscape surrounding him, Tim Shaw, a sculptor originally from Northern , explores the inner landscape of the human condition. Drawn to Cornwall for its feeling of independence and ‘otherness’ from the rest of England, his monumental public sculpture Drummer Boy can be seen at the Eden Project. This symbolic work is a celebration of the spirit of a land and its people. His interest in mythology, and reinterpreting it to find contemporary meaning, can be clearly seen in his installation The Rites of Dionysus on permanent display in the Mediterranean Biodome at the Hepworth was initially unsure of coming to Cornwall, yet when she Eden project. arrived she immediately responded to the land, able to feel ’a figure in THE FUTURE the landscape’. After the war years spent without studio space, in 1949 What of the future of art in Cornwall? Artists are the product of their she bought Trewyn studios, St Ives, now the time, and there are progressive artists thinking about environmental and Sculpture Garden. Hepworth lived here until her death in 1975, her change and actively seeking creative methods through which art can continuing belief in socialist ideas of community led her to stipulate her have an impact on our current environment. Just as in the Victorian era studio be opened to the public. Her bronzes, positioned as she herself artists were inspired by new discoveries about the natural world, there placed them in the garden, are seen in the environment for which they are artists drawing together knowledge from the arts and the sciences, were created. to offer their own, unique view on nature. The war brought the modernists down to Cornwall, and the Cornwall first attracted the art world as being an attractive established art community welcomed them. Although they were mostly venue for artists to come to, be inspired, create and then leave, painters in the plein air tradition, amongst them Moffat Lindner, Borlase their work scattered around the world. Now the county is host to Smart, John Park, Leonard Fuller and his wife Marjorie Mostyn, they creative organisations such as Urbanomic. Determinedly rooted to were sympathetic to the ideas of the newcomers, understanding the the county, they promote research activities that address crucial interest in hidden forces in nature. issues in contemporary philosophy and science and their relation to Leonard Fuller set up the of Painting in 1938, and it contemporary art practice. Instead of using the academies and galleries continues to this day - the longest running school for painting in the of London to show people visions of Cornwall, artists are calling to the country. As more artists arrived in the town, drawn to it by the presence world to come and see what happens next. of Gabo, Hepworth and Nicholson, they would take part in some of the PLACES TO VISIT classes, particularly life drawing. We are extremely fortunate to have in Cornwall several institutions After the war, more and more artists arrived who were interested including Penlee House, Falmouth Art Gallery and Royal Cornwall in exploring an abstraction based on nature, and their own ideas of Museum (contact details in the list of galleries) who have collections modernism. Artists such as: , Roger Hilton, , Bryan of art from many of the artists listed above. If you are interested in Wynter, Guido Morris and Karl Weschke. visiting, please remember it is a good idea to contact the organisations These younger artists such as were not so much a ‘school’ as a concerned first as works may not be on show. loose association of painters and sculptors who either lived in or were Some of the galleries, including , do not hold permanent associated with the town through friendships, connections and shared collections, but do offer a wide-range of changing exhibitions featuring preoccupations. work from some of the artists mentioned. There are numerous galleries However, with so many artists in such a small town, there would situated around the county where you can see the work of the many always be tensions, fights and falling out. The St Ives Society of Artists excellent artists working in Cornwall today.

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