This spring, Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance is hosting two exhibitions which will allow people to see two of the most iconic and famous Newlyn School paintings alongside a host of outstanding but less well-known works.
The exhibition ‘James Clarke Hook and Painters of the Sea’, originally shown at Tate Britain in London, includes the much-loved Stanhope Forbes painting The Health of the Bride, together with the equally renowned work A Hopeless Dawn by Frank Bramley. Alison Bevan, Director of Penlee House, said ‘So many people know these paintings from books and other reproductions, but standing in front of the original works is quite breathtaking – not least because of their sheer size. This exhibition offers a rare chance to see these world famous works back here in West Cornwall where they were painted well over a century ago’.
The main theme of this show, however, is the work and influence of a less well-known painter, James Clarke Hook (1819 – 1907). In 1865, a Times critic wrote of Hook’s work ‘It is impossible to exaggerate the freshness of sea-side life, the smack of sea-side air, the truth of the boats, the sea, the tide-bared shore, shingle and rock’. The writer hoped to encourage other artists to follow Hook’s lead: he more than got his wish, as Hook’s lone preoccupation with fishing communities and coastal landscapes became, within two decades, the core subjects for scores of artists, motivating the development of the art colonies at Newlyn and St Ives.
The exhibition incorporates a selection of Hook’s major works, and also includes the work of those of later generations who followed in his footsteps, such as Forbes and Bramley. The show also includes John Brett’s magnificent painting, Britannia’s Realm, of 1881 – a patriotic evocation of the English Channel.
Originally shown at Tate Britain in 2007 to commemorate the centenary of Hook’s death, the exhibition was curated by Juliet McMaster and Christiana Payne working with Tate curator, Alison Smith. The show is accompanied by two books, Where the Sea Meets the Land: Artists on the Coast in the C19th by Christiana Payne, and Woman behind the Painter, Rosalie, Mrs James Clarke Hook by Juliet McMaster.
Also on show during the same period is an exhibition of work by the Birmingham-born Newlyn School artist Edwin Harris. In the famous group photographs of the Newlyn School painters Edwin Harris is seated in the centre, which indicates his great importance in the early development of the Newlyn School. It is fitting that this exhibition is on show while The Health of the Bride is also at Penlee House, since it was the sale of this painting which enabled Stanhope Forbes to marry Elizabeth Armstrong, who he had met four years earlier at a party given by Harris and his wife.
The exhibition offers a unique chance to see a group of this artist’s work together, since loans have come from private collectors across the UK and even include works flown in from America especially for the show. Although much of Harris’s work is modest in scale, visitors unfamiliar with his work will soon discover that there is nothing slight about his painterly gift: his larger canvasses have the confidence, power and emotion of the best of his contemporaries, while his tiny portraits on panels – usually measuring a mere 8” x 6” – are quite outstanding. The shimmering, virtuoso square-brush painting employed to produce these poignant portraits of characterful models result in works of jewel-like quality: despite their tiny size and the anonymity of the models, they have a powerful magnetism and reward many hours of gazing.
