The new exhibition at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, opening on 17th September, celebrates the distinguished career of Penzance-based painter Charles Walter Simpson, whose many books and magazine illustrations brought him extensive acclaim. Born in Surrey, Simpson turned to painting when a riding accident prevented him from following a military career. He had always enjoyed drawing and painting animals as a child and honed this skill by studying at the Bushey School of Painting, run by the animal painter Lucy Kemp-Welch, and by working with Alfred Munnings in Norfolk in the early 1900s.
In 1906 he arrived in Newlyn; here he met Ruth Alison, a promising student at the Forbes School, who he married in 1913. Together they established the St Ives School of Art, where Ruth taught portraiture. He gained the respect of the artistic community for his pastoral paintings and large seascapes with gulls and by the early 1920s was the leading figure in the St Ives artists’ colony. His large and impressive paintings of animals and birds often show a lively brushwork, but without being slavishly detailed they are nonetheless precise: one visitor to his studio recalls there being a dead seagull pinned to the wall to ensure the accuracy of his depictions!
Simpson’s life changed direction when, in 1924, he moved to London. His wide interests included sport, literature and music and he wrote and illustrated books on the rodeo, on hunting in Leicestershire and Yorkshire and on Emily Brönte, as well as illustrating the work of other writers. Charles and Ruth then returned to Cornwall, where Simpson continued to write and illustrate, producing books on photography and art. Living in Lamorna before finally settling in Penzance, he returned to painting the coastline and his favourite subject – ducks on the stream or millpond. In dappled sunlight the ducks move serenely across the water, conveying an enduring sense of peace and timelessness.
Simpson was a painter of immense energy who produced paintings of great variety and this show includes both familiar and unusual examples of his work, from public and private collections. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and several of these pictures are included in the exhibition.
