No island race can be unaffected by the draw and power of the sea. Britain’s culture and history is innately linked with maritime matters, so it is perhaps inevitable that one of the key periods of British art history – 1880 to 1930 – is marked by the flourishing of art colonies dotted around our coastline.
Penlee House Gallery & Museum is celebrating this artistic fascination with coastal life with a major exhibition surveying the art of eight contemporary British art colonies: Newlyn, Lamorna and St Ives (all in Cornwall), Walberswick (Suffolk), Staithes (Yorkshire), Cullercoats (Northumbria), Kirkcudbright (Dumfries & Galloway) and Cockburnspath (Scottish Borders).
Long before these colonies developed, artists had taken temporary inspiration from coastal life, and of course they continue to do so; virtually every seaside village in Britain has hosted the occasional visiting artist. What marks out the eight localities featured in this exhibition is that they were not just transitory holiday locations, they were settled artists’ communities.
Although each of these colonies has been celebrated in some way through exhibitions and publications, this is the first time they have been brought together in one exhibition and book. Fittingly, this is happening in the ‘Year of the Sea’, marking the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. By combining these concurrent colonies, it is possible not only to see what unites and divides their artistic approaches, but also the personal ties between each, with several artists’ work appearing in more than one place.
The exhibition is a collaboration with the University of Northumbria and is accompanied by an extensive and lavishly illustrated publication (published by Sansom & Co.) which examines the inter-relationships between each place and highlights key works by each colony’s leading artists.
The exhibition includes works by Newlyn School painters Frank Bramley, Walter Langley, Elizabeth Forbes, Fred Hall, W. B. Fortescue and Dod Procter. Among the members of the Lamorna group included are S. J. ‘Lamorna’ Birch, A. J. Munnings, Charles Naper and Laura Knight. Staithes painters include Mark Senior, Charles Mackie, Laura and Harold Knight and Isa Jobling. From Walberswick, there are Walter Osborne, Philip Wilson Steer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and George Clausen. Cullercoats works include paintings by Henry Emmerson, John Slater, Frank Holl, Robert Jobling, Arthur Marsh, George Horton and John Charlton. The two Scottish colonies are represented by James Guthrie, David Gauld, Thomas Blacklock, Jessie King, Charles Oppenheimer, William Mouncey, Ernest Tayler, Samuel Peploe, Edward Hornel and Charles Mackie.
Incorporating around 70 works, with loans from national, regional and private collections, the exhibition will allow those familiar with one or more of the colonies to see the work in the context of developments elsewhere in the UK, while offering audiences new to any of the artists an aesthetic treat.
Following its launch at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, where it runs from 18th June to 10thSeptember 2005, the exhibition will tour to Newport Art Gallery, Gwent.
