Works of the Newlyn School have been at the heart of Messum’s since its opening in 1963. Sixty years on, our summer exhibition at St James’s looks back to our roots, showcasing an impressive collection of oils and watercolours by key founding members of the Newlyn School.
Arriving in Newlyn
"Most of us young students were turning our backs on the great cities, forsaking the studios with their unvarying north light, to set up our easels in country districts, where we could pose our models and attack our work in sunshine or in shadow, under the open sky." - Stanhope Alexander Forbes
Stanhope Alexander Forbes is generally recognised as the father of the Newlyn School, having settled in the Cornish fishing village in 1884. Forbes had previously studied in Paris, where he encountered the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage, the leading plein-air Naturalist painter. It was also in Paris that Forbes met Arthur Hacker and Henry Herbert La Thangue, two artists who would also later work in Newlyn. Forbes and La Thangue took their first painting trip to Brittany together in the summer of 1881. Here, Forbes produced his first en plein air painting, A Street in Brittany, which was well-received at the Royal Academy. This experience would lay the groundwork for a plein-air painting practice that would come to define the work of the Newlyn colony artists.
Upon his return to England, Forbes sought an English environment comparable to that of Brittany where he could pursue the motifs and the way of life which had been an essential part of his work in France. Cornwall, with its Breton associations was an obvious area to explore and Newlyn, in particular, served as an ideal location for Naturalist artists due to its remote nature, virtually untouched by industry and modernisation. The Naturalist Grant Allen highlighted this in an article of 1883, describing Newlyn as “a fisher village. . . a picturesque mass of narrow streets. . . huddled together. . . and appropriately invaded by an ancient and fishlike smell. In one moment, you seem to be transported from the fashionable world of the present day to a busy unsophisticated fishing village of the last century”.
In search of his ‘English Concarneau’ Stanhope Forbes set out from Paddington in January 1884 on the Great Western Railway. Alighting at Falmouth, he toured the area on foot and eventually came by chance upon Newlyn, to find an embryonic colony of artists already growing there. Walter Langley had probably been the first to settle, discovering the picturesque fishing village during a summer holiday from his work in Birmingham and when, in 1882, circumstances permitted him to take up painting professionally, he decided to move to Cornwall permanently. In the two years before Forbes’ arrival, Langley had been joined by Thomas Cooper Gotch, again resuming an earlier acquaintance with Newlyn.
While still a student in 1879, he had come over with Henry Scott Tuke from Falmouth to visit his future wife, Caroline Yates. Edwin Harris, another Birmingham artist, presumably followed Langley down and in due course was joined by Fred Hall and Frank Bramley who had been with him both at Verlat’s Academy in Antwerp and later in Finistère. By the time Forbes had been there six months, other ex-emigrés had turned up, including William Banks Fortescue, Henry Detmold, Norman Garstin, Blandford Fletcher, W. Wainwright, and Chevallier Tayler. By the end of the year, twenty-seven artists were resident in Newlyn.
While faced with the painterly challenges of harsh weather conditions, as well as the more sensitive issue of painting on the Sabbath day in a village with a strong Wesleyan tradition, within a year, many of the artists had actively woven themselves into the fabric of the community and set about recording every aspect of Newlyn life. While many of the Newlyn artists tended to focus on the hardships faced by Newlyn’s fishing fleet as they fought with the elements, or even the drama of the elements themselves, Walter Langley cast a more sympathetic eye on the quieter domestic troubles of the sweethearts, wives and children left behind while their men folk went to sea.
Knitting by Langley demonstrates his undoubted skill in a notoriously difficult medium, in a carefully observed, often highly detailed work, that belied the fluidity with which he could paint. It also reflects his genuine empathy with the populace of Newlyn, perhaps a reflection of his own background having grown up in poverty. The intimate scene conveys something of the bittersweet nature of lives lived under difficult conditions at the turn of the last century. Similarly, the subjects of Forbes’ interior scenes became increasingly informal, offering intimate glimpses into the lives of people living in Newlyn at the turn of the century and thus serving as
insightful historical documents. Forbes’ painting The Picture Book is one such example. The fall of light on the sitter’s faces – either mother and son or sister and brother – and on the page of the picture book suggests that they have gathered around the only the oil lamp in a humble cottage interior. The boy’s round-necked jersey and woollen hat imply that he was the son of one of the numerous local fishermen while the coloured illustrations of the book proclaim it as an expensive publication for the period.
This group of artists, working in the remote fishing village of Newlyn, left a significant impression on the artistic scene of the south-west of England, as well as British art in a wider context. Not only does their work provide an intimate window into the lives of working peoples and their families at the turn of the last century, but the Newlyn colony artists paved the way for the founding of the New English Art Club and were largely responsible for pioneering the post-impressionist movement in Britain.
A fully illustrated catalogue for our summer exhibition of British Impressionism is available to buy online and from our gallery in St. James's
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