125 years ago this year, a group of young artists posed to have their photographs taken: they were just becoming known as the ‘Newlyn School’ and were to become recognised as one of Britain’s most important art colonies.
The exhibition being held at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, this summer provides a snapshot of the work produced by these artists at a time when their shared values, subjects and style led one of their number, Stanhope Forbes, to describe them as ‘the brotherhood of the palette’. The exhibition includes important examples of work by the artists depicted in the photographs – including Forbes, Langley, Harris, Tuke, Tayler, Wainwright, Bodilly, Millard, Bramley, Fletcher and Todd – and offers an insight into the unifying values that makes them a true ‘School’ in art historical terms.
Inspired by the art being produced in France (particularly Brittany), in the early 1880s a number of British painters were motivated to depict the everyday lives of fishing and farming communities, using muted tones to concentrate the eye on the effects of light. To such artists, the Cornish village of Newlyn offered a wealth of subjects to paint and a picturesque setting that was both remote and yet within a mile or two of a mainline train service to London.
In 1884, Stanhope Forbes arrived to find a burgeoning art colony. The acclaim he received when his painting ‘Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach’ was shown at the Royal Academy the following year made Newlyn famous and led yet more artists to come to the village. The exhibition ‘The Brotherhood of the Palette’ includes this iconic painting alongside other major Newlyn School works such as Forbes’s ‘Off to the Fishing Grounds’ (Walker Art Gallery), Frank Bramley’s ‘Primrose Day’ (Tate) and Walter Langley’s ‘But Men Must Work and Women Must Weep’ (Birmingham Art Gallery), together with more personal material such as the series of cartoons of the artists painted by Fred Hall (Tate Archive). As well as the ‘brothers’ featured in the photographs, other key Newlyn School figures, including Elizabeth Forbes, Norman Garstin and Caroline and Thomas Cooper Gotch are also included, alongside photographs and other ephemera which evoke the personalities of these long-dead painters.
Although Penlee House has become well known for showing Newlyn School works, this exhibition will be the first major survey show in over 20 years to focus on the early works which made the Newlyn School internationally famous. ‘Over the years, the term ‘Newlyn School’ has often been misapplied to anyone even vaguely associated with this area of Cornwall, regardless of date and style’, said Penlee House’s Director, Alison Bevan. ‘Our exhibition aims to show what the term means in its strictest sense and to offer visitors the chance to revel in the glory-years of rural realist painting’. Many of the works on show are on loan from public and private collections elsewhere, including several which have rarely, if ever, been shown publicly in Cornwall before, so don’t miss the chance to catch them.
Supported by Ecclesiastical Insurance (specialists in heritage insurance),
