The ‘Newlyn School’ painters are best known for their depictions of fishing community: think of artists like Stanhope Forbes and Walter Langley, and images of fishermen and boats spring to mind. Yet these artists and their contemporaries also turned their attention inland, capturing the landscape and agricultural life of Cornwall at the turn of the 20th century. A major exhibition at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, this summer celebrates this aspect of the Newlyners’ art, in a show entitled ‘A Rural Idyll: A Painterly Celebration of Cornish Landscape & Agriculture (1880 – 1940)’.
True to their realist style, the Newlyn painters recorded the lives of rural folk honestly and without sentimentality: their subjects are real people going about their daily lives. Hence they recorded for posterity – sometimes deliberately, knowing it was a fleeting moment of history, and sometimes consequentially – the methods of farming in use at the time and the impact of cultivation on the landscape.
Some of the places depicted have changed beyond recognition, others remain largely untouched, but the social history implicit in the paintings only adds to the delight instilled by the skill and beauty in their execution.
As usual, Penlee House staff have searched the Country to track down paintings for the exhibition, managing to unearth many paintings not seen in Cornwall since they were painted. Stars of the show include several works by Stanhope Forbes, such as ‘The Drinking Place’ (on loan from Gallery Oldham) and the newly rediscovered ‘Lighting Up Time’, once rumoured to have been destroyed (generously lent by a private individual).
The artist most associated with painting farming scenes is, of course, Harold Harvey, so the exhibition includes several examples of his work. Some, such as the magnificent paintings ‘The Road to Market’ and ‘Hoeing Parsley’ are familiar favourites from the 2001 Harvey exhibition, but others, such as ‘Higher Porthmeor Farm, Zennor’ have not been shown publicly before.
Other core Newlyn School works include Albert Chevallier Tayler’s powerful ‘Not Lost but Gone Before’ on loan from the Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead and William Banks Fortescue’s ‘February’ (private collection), together with works by Fred Hall, Thomas Cooper Gotch, Walter Langley and Elizabeth Forbes.
The second flowering of Newlyn artists are also represented, with works by Lamorna Birch, Sir Alfred Munnings, Charles Simpson, Kate Westrup and Stanley Gardiner, alongside stunning examples of work by St Ives painters John Anthony Park, Algernon Talmage and Thomas Maidment.
Covering some 60 years of social history and including a host of eye-catching and memorable images, ‘A Rural Idyll’ is sure to offer an idyllic experience to all who visit!
