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THE LAMORNA ARTISTS It was Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes' 'School of Painting', founded in 1899, that brought a new generation of artists to West Cornwall. Their aim was to rebuild the Newlyn Colony after the departure of many of the original artists. The school attracted a large number of students, partly due to the ready-made social life that flourished in the village between 1900 and the First World War. The aim of the school was to teach the students the 'plein air' techniques of painting, influenced by the French rural realist painters through periods of study in Brittany. The students were to learn how to paint the ever-changing weather conditions, the effects of the sunlight upon the landscape and the importance of working directly from models outdoors, rather than painting them into the scene afterwards, back in the studio. Several of these students chose to base themselves in the nearby village of Lamorna, a small cove with dramatic cliffs aapproached through an atmospheric wooded valley, a few miles along the coast from Newlyn. The cove had been settled upon by the influential artist Samuel John 'Lamorna' Birch, who had arrived from Lancashire around ten years before. He was joined by Dod Shaw, Ernest Procter, Eleanor and Robert Hughes, Ruth Allison, Kathleen Earle, Frank Heath and Midge Bruford as well as Harold and Laura Knight, Ella and Charles Naper and Alethea Garstin. The Lamorna Artists' style of painting was much more concerned with strong sunlight and brilliant colours. The artists used a much brighter palette than their Newlyn predecessors and often painted 'straight from the tube' i.e. they did not soften the colours by mixing them. |
