Black and white/sepia (delete as appropriate)

Acc.no: PEZPH : 2016.50.248

Identification

Item: Betsy Lanyon standing with fish cowel on her back.

Description: Gibson emphasises a sense of grittier realism in this photograph of Betsy Lanyon. This is not a sanitised version of a fishwoman wearing her Sunday best or a more attractive younger woman, but an elderly fishwoman her face lined with experience; large, gnarled hands; wearing a stained and creased apron which has clearly been well used. Part of a series of Gibson's photographs (2016.50.242-251) of the fishwives and friends, Betsy Lanyon (1808-1892) and Blanche Courtney (1817-1902) taken in the Gibson Mount's Bay Studio in Market Jew Street, Penzance. All are staged before a stylised backdrop of a maritime scene with individual seashore props e.g. rope, nets, rocks, pebbles, fish and fish baskets. Apart from serving the practical purpose of disguising the join of the backdrop with the floor, these props also add to the overall atmosphere and give a sense of depth to the portraits. The figure of the old Cornish fishwife was a popular theme not only in photographs, but also in the art of the Newlyn School. As Mary O'Neill points out, this was part of "the mythologising of the Cornish working class showing the value of life experience, fortitude and stoicism" ('Cornwall's fisherfolk - Art and Artifice'.) These photographs were probably taken c. 1885 (Betsy Lanyon died in 1892), when Betsy would have been aged 77 and Blanche 68. The photographs were taken at roughly the same time as Walter Langley was also producing some of this masterpieces in Newlyn. Rather than photography imitating art or vice versa, both mediums may have cross-fertilised and were probably both responding to the same cultural sentiments.

Condition: Good

Description

Material: Photographic paper

Production

Method: Printed

Category: Photography

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