Walter Langley RI RSA 1852 - 1922

Born in Birmingham, Langley was the first of the ‘Newlyn School’ artists to settle here, arriving in 1882, closely followed by his friend Edwin Harris.

Langley started his artistic career at the age of fifteen, when he was apprenticed to a Birmingham lithographer. At twenty-one, having completed his apprenticeship, he won a scholarship to South Kensington, where he studied design. Langley returned to Birmingham to continue as a lithographer, but spent his spare time painting and soon gave up lithography to concentrate on this aspect of his work.

Although Langley was an accomplished painter in oils, he mainly painted in watercolour, often on a large scale. Using this demanding and difficult medium, he portrayed scenes of everyday life in a small fishing village, highlighting the adversities and tragedies that were commonplace during that period. It can be argued that Langley's work displays a greater sympathy for the hardships of the inhabitants of Newlyn than that of any other artist.