The landscape, light and lifestyle of West Cornwall have attracted thousands of artists over the centuries, yet only a handful of names are familiar to most art lovers. This autumn, Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance is presenting an exhibition of work produced in West Cornwall between 1840 and 1939, including some of the most familiar names and best loved images, alongside rarely seen works and sole identified examples of Cornish paintings by unknown talents.
Alongside popular paintings by Stanhope Forbes, Walter Langley, Harold Harvey and Lamorna Birch are works by artists such as Thomas Hart (1830 – 1916), Herbert Babbage (1875 – 1916), J. T. Blight (1835 – 1911), John Henry Martin (1835 – 1908) and Caroline Gotch (1854 – 1945).
Offering a wide variety of subjects and styles, but all with the same high quality for which Penlee House has become recognised, this exhibition is essential viewing for any art-lover, with added interest for local historians.
As if that were not enough temptation to visit Penlee House, showing concurrently with ‘A Century of Art’ is a major national touring exhibition from the South Bank Centre, London, of works from the Arts Council England’s collection, called ‘Spotlight on St Ives’.
2006 is the 60th anniversary of the Arts Council Collection, the most exciting collection of post-war and contemporary British art in the world. The Hayward Gallery, which manages the Collection, is holding a year-long celebration, which includes this touring exhibition, culminating in a major show at the Hayward Gallery in London, also on show in September 2006.
‘Spotlight on St Ives’ concentrates on works by the St Ives modernists – artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, who left London at the outbreak of the Second World War to settle in St Ives, establishing probably the most important artists’ community in twentieth century British art.
The Arts Council Collection owns a particularly strong group of works by the leading St Ives artists from 1939 to the mid-1960s. Many of the artists gained international reputations, producing work that, although abstract, was inspired by the striking landscape of West Cornwall. The exhibition includes around 25 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints by Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Peter Lanyon, Terry Frost, Roger Hilton, Bryan Wynter, Patrick Hayman, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Denis Mitchell and John Wells, as well as earlier works by Alfred Wallis and Christopher Wood.
