Description
Henry Scott Tuke (1858–1929) is among the most important of those exceptional artists who formed the Newlyn School in Cornwall. Although sadly neglected for many years after his death,Tuke’s importance as a distinguished British Impressionist with his own unique contribution to British art can no longer be ignored. Today he is not only of importance to Cornwall, but nationally and internationally as his works are eagerly sought by galleries and collectors alike.
Unlike many of the Newlyn School, of which he was a founding member, Tuke knew Cornwall from earliest childhood; and it was his love of the great bay at Falmouth that after two years drew him away from West Penwith to paint the varied shipping in the harbour, often from his floating studio, the Julie of Nantes, and the youths on the quiet beaches below his cottage at Pennance Point on the outskirts of Falmouth, his home until his death.
The pictures by Tuke in the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society form the largest publicly owned collection of the artist’s work in the United Kingdom, spanning his entire career from Slade studies to mature maritime pieces, portraits and nude compositions. It is this collection that forms the basis of this important book. CatherineWallace studied Fine Art at Canterbury College of Art and then Museums and Gallery studies at St Andrew’s University. She curated a major exhibition of Wyndham Lewis’ art at the Imperial War Museum before moving to Cornwall in 1993. She was director of Falmouth Art Gallery for eight years. She is now a freelance art consultant and works with art charities and commercial galleries as well as public museums. She is also a writer on art and is the author of Under the Open Sky, The Paintings of the Newlyn and Lamorna Artists 1880–1940 in the Public Collections of Cornwall and Plymouth, and ‘Catching the Light’: Henry Scott Tuke (1858–1929).
