The Art of the Newlyn School: Paintings from The Bowerman Collection

Some of the most important paintings of the Newlyn School are coming home to Cornwall this autumn, as Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance opens a major exhibition bringing together 40 works from the celebrated Bowerman Collection alongside masterpieces from its own nationally important collection.

Opening on 7 October 2026, The Art of the Newlyn School: Paintings from The Bowerman Collection offers a rare chance to see paintings by the artists who transformed Newlyn and West Cornwall into one of Britain’s most celebrated artistic colonies — displayed just minutes from the places they depict.

The exhibition includes much-loved works such as Walter Langley’s powerful Breadwinners and Harold Harvey’s Titbits alongside rarely seen gems including Elizabeth Forbes’s Picnic in the Woods and Dod Procter’s Blue, Portrait of a Girl. Together, the paintings reveal the extraordinary range of artists who came to Cornwall from the 1880s onwards, drawn by its people, landscape and remarkable light.

Among them are Stanhope Forbes, the ‘father of the Newlyn School’, and his wife Elizabeth Forbes, alongside Walter Langley, Albert Chevallier Tayler and Henry Scott Tuke.

The story continues into the early twentieth century, when a new generation of artists brought fresh colour and energy to the colony. Harold Harvey captured the people and rural landscapes of Cornwall, while Dod Procter and Dame Laura Knight challenged expectations of what women artists could achieve.

The exhibition is the first stop on a major national tour by The Bowerman Collection, but its opening at Penlee House Gallery & Museum is especially significant. The Bowerman Collection is one of the most important private holdings of Newlyn School paintings, while Penlee House holds the largest public collection of Newlyn School art.

Bringing the two collections together gives visitors the opportunity to see these works in a new context — and to experience paintings of Cornish life and light in the landscape that inspired them.

Founded from the private collection of David Bowerman MBE, the Bowerman Charitable Trust in Sussex was established with the aim of making great art accessible to the public. Following its Penzance opening, the exhibition will travel to Nottingham, Dedham, Birkenhead, Worcester and Newcastle, reaching audiences across England through to September 2028.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to see such a large selection of works from The Bowerman Collection alongside Penlee House’s own exceptional holdings,” said Katie Herbert, Curator / Deputy Director of Penlee House. “There is nowhere more appropriate to launch this national tour than Penzance, at the heart of the Newlyn School story.”

The exhibition is accompanied by a new book, The Art of the Newlyn School: Paintings of Cornish Life and Light, written by curator Alison Bevan and published by Sansom & Co. Lavishly illustrated with more than 150 works from The Bowerman Collection and Penlee House, it explores the artists and communities that made Newlyn one of the most important artistic centres of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. The book will be available from the Penlee House shop.

Cover image: Harold Harvey. The Young Ploughman. Oil on canvas. The Bowerman Collection

Above: Harold Harvey. Titbits. Oil on canvas. The Bowerman Collection. Dod Procter. Portrait of Midge Bruford. Oil on Canvas. The Bowerman Collection. Walter Langley. The Old Pilot. Watercolour. The Bowerman Collection. Walter Langley. Breadwinners. The Bowerman Collection.