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FINE ART Since its foundation, Penlee House has collected works of art, including oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, prints and lithographs. The artist Richard Pentreath, who was born in Mousehole, was one of the first artists to give a work to the collection, donating 'View from Madron Carn' as early as 1839. The earliest work in the collection is 'Mount's Bay' by William Brooks.  Mount's Bay by William Brooks 1790  The collection includes etchings and lithographs by such artists as Prout, Pentreath, Daniell, Garnier and Tonkin. An early gift to the collections was a set of original pencil drawings for the Penzance and St. Michael's Mount aquatints produced in 1813 by William Daniell RA for Richard Ayton's book "A Voyage Around Great Britain". Penlee House is probably most famous for its collections of work by the "Newlyn School", the colony of artists who settled in the area from the 1880s and into the early twentieth century. Walter Langley is thought to have been the first to arrive, having a studio in Newlyn as early as 1882, followed by others, including the 'father' of the group, Stanhope Forbes, who arrived in 1884. The collection also includes work by the later Newlyn artists, such as Harold Harvey and Dod Procter, and the artists who settled in and around the Lamorna Valley, of which perhaps the best known are Dame Laura Knight, Samuel John 'Lamorna' Birch and Alfred Munnings.  The Breadwinners by W Langley 1896 The gallery has an active collecting policy, and seeks to add to the collections both historic and contemporary work that has been created by artists in West Cornwall. |
