thumb|[[Walter Langley, Between The Tides, 1901]]

The Newlyn School was an art colony of artists based in or near Newlyn, a fishing village adjacent to Penzance, on the south coast of Cornwall, from the 1880s until the early twentieth century. The establishment of the Newlyn School was reminiscent of the Barbizon School in France, where artists fled Paris to paint in a more pure setting emphasising natural light. These schools often painted en plein air (in the open air, in front of the scenes they were depicting).

The school consisted of a considerable range of styles over the years, but many paintings were of genre subjects of everyday life in a relatively poor, if certainly picturesque, village. The handling of paint was often loose and free, sometimes coming to approach Impressionism.

History

Some of the first British artists to settle in the area had already travelled in Brittany, but found in Newlyn a comparable English environment with a number of things guaranteed to attract them: fantastic light, cheap living, and the availability of inexpensive models. The artists were fascinated by the fishermen's working life at sea and the everyday life in the harbour and nearby villages. Some paintings showed the hazards and tragedy of the community's life, such as women anxiously looking out to sea as the boats go out, or a young woman crying on hearing news of a disaster. Walter Langley is generally recognised as the pioneer of the Newlyn art colony and Stanhope Forbes, who settled there in 1884, as the father of it. The local newspaper (The Cornishman) was positive about the artists, reporting that the area had much to thank them for ″... circulating money, ...″, and ″... are ever ready to assist in anything which pertains to the welfare of the town.″

thumb|[[Laura Knight, Boys, 1910, set in Cornwall]]

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Lamorna, a nearby fishing village to the south, became popular with artists of the Newlyn School and is particularly associated with the artist S J "Lamorna" Birch who lived there from 1908. In 1908 the colony received a considerable boost when Laura Knight and her husband Harold Knight moved to Newlyn, and later Lamorna, becoming key figures in the later stages of the group. They had previously been an important part of the Staithes group, a similar colony based in a fishing village south of Newcastle-on-Tyne.

The Forbes School of Painting was founded by Forbes and his wife Elizabeth in 1899, and promoted the study of figure painting. A present-day Newlyn School of Art was formed in 2011 with Arts Council funding providing art courses taught by many of the best-known artists working in Cornwall today.

Member artists

Newlyn School painters include:

  • Lamorna Birch
  • Frank Bramley
  • Marjorie Frances Bruford
  • Elizabeth Forbes
  • Stanhope Forbes
  • John Fullwood
  • Norman Garstin
  • Caroline Gotch
  • Thomas Cooper Gotch
  • Frederick Hall
  • Edwin Harris
  • Gertrude Harvey
  • Harold Harvey
  • Eleanor Hughes
  • Ayerst Ingram
  • Mary Jewels
  • Harold Knight
  • Laura Knight
  • Walter Langley
  • Carey Morris
  • Alfred Munnings
  • Dod Procter
  • Charles Simpson
  • Ruth Simpson
  • Albert Chevallier Tayler
  • Henry Scott Tuke
  • Annie Walke née Fearon

For a full list see: George Bednar. Every Corner was a Picture: A checklist compiled for the West Cornwall Art Archive of 50 artists from the early Newlyn School painters through to the present.

References

  • Newlyn School (Encyclopedia of Irish and World Art)
  • Newlyn artists (The Lamorna Society)