This autumn, Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance is presenting a ground-breaking new exhibition looking at the extraordinary diversity of art produced in St Ives between 1914 and 1930. Entitled Sea Change, the show highlights a period of transition during which the world-famous art colony adapted to momentous changes artistically, politically, socially, economically and demographically.
In the lead-up to the First World War, the thriving art colony in St Ives had an international reputation as a centre for landscape and marine painting, and in the summer of 1914, no fewer than fifty American artists were working in the town. The outbreak of war resulted in a complete change of personnel, however, as most of the Americans headed home, while young British artists enlisted. One of these was Borlase Smart, and the exhibition contains some of the evocative drawings he did while on the Western Front, which were among the very first works acquired by the Imperial War Museum after its foundation in 1917. Also from their collection is Charles Bryant’s depiction of ‘dazzle’ painted ships, a camouflage ploy devised by St Ives School of Painting alumnus, Norman Wilkinson.
During the hostilities, St Ives was seen as a safe haven and a number of new artists settled in the town, bringing with them a wide variety of artistic techniques, so that, although the quantity of art was reduced, it was considerably broadened in scope. A notable newcomer was the New Zealander Frances Hodgkins, who described her time in St Ives as her ‘experimental years’. One of her first oil paintings was Loveday and Anne, a depiction of a fisherman’s two daughters, which fellow artist Moffat Lindner bought to encourage her to continue taking painting seriously. Other arrivals included two esteemed Belgian refugee artists, the symbolist painter Emile Fabry and Louis Reckelbus, who introduced Fauvist colour into the colony. Also producing innovative work were Louis Sargent, who depicted the Cornish coastline in ever more vibrant hues, and Claude Barry, who began his experiments with pointillism: Barry’s Peace Night in Trafalgar Square, showing Nelson’s monument backlit by searchlights and fireworks, is one of the exhibition’s highlights.
The 1920s saw some artists returning to pre-War style landscape and marine subjects – painters such as John Park and Charles Simpson. During his period in the town (1916-1924), Simpson dominated the local scene, producing an astonishing number of major paintings in a variety of styles. He had a particular fascination with painting objects contra jour (against the light) and two fine examples in the show are The Flight of Wild Duck, showing mallard rising off the Lelant marshes against the setting sun, and The Herring Season from My Studio Window, depicting catch being landed at the Wharf at daybreak.
During the 1920s, a collecting craze led to a speculative bubble in the market for prints. The key figure in St Ives was Alfred Hartley, who won several international medals and whose clients included the King and Queen of Italy. He drew the Canadian Donald MacLaughlan to St Ives, and Sidney Long, who became Australia’s leading etcher, credited Hartley for initiating his etchings. This period also saw the dawn of St Ives as a centre for the decorative arts, particularly with the foundation of the Leach Pottery, and the exhibition includes work by Leach, Hamada and Cardew. There is also a section on Cryséde, whose block-printed textiles were based on Alec Walker’s modernist paintings of the local landscape.
The late 1920s famously saw the development of the cult of the naïve vision, as a number of artists sought to dethrone academic painting, and believed that one must instead look at things through the eyes of a child or of a primitive. Two such artists, Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson, were immensely excited by their discovery of Alfred Wallis in St Ives in 1928, whose apparent innate untutored creativity made him the touchstone for the whole St Ives modernist movement. Sea Change shows how St Ives was at the heart of the artistic turmoil in the First World War and its aftermath and how, despite an extremely difficult political and economic backdrop, the town still retained the ability to attract distinguished artists and inspire them to produce seminal works. Curated by David Tovey and accompanied by a new book of the same title.
