Penlee House Gallery & Museum is an elegant gallery set within
a Victorian house and park. Changing exhibitions mainly feature famous
'Newlyn School' and Lamorna Group artists (1880-1930).
Newlyn School artists include Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes, Walter Langley, Harold Harvey and Norman Garstin (see Newlyn Artists Database link),
while the Lamorna Group includes Laura Knight,
'Lamorna' Birch and Alfred Munnings.

Penlee House is proud to be the host of the 2008 conference of the British Association of Friends of Museums.
This year's theme - A Sense of Place
3 - 5 October
click here for booking details and conference programme

Current Exhibition:

James Clarke Hook and Painters of the Sea
Gallery 1
&
Focus on Edwin Harris
Gallery 5
15 March - 7 June 2008

The Health of the Bride (Oil on Canvas) 1889 Stanhope Forbes © Tate, London 2008	Mending the Nets (Oil on Canvas) 1903 Edwin Harris Private Collection

James Clarke Hook and Painters of the Sea comes to Penlee House from its showing at Tate Britain, this exhibition celebrates the work of some of Britain's greatest maritime painters, including Frank Bramley, Stanhope Forbes, James Clarke Hook, Colin Hunter, Charles Napier Hemy and John Brett. In the later nineteenth century, many painters worked on the coast, studying the movements of the sea and the experience of the fishing communities, emphasising the boundlessness of the ocean or monumentalising events in the lives of the fishermen and women. The pioneer of such painting in Britain was James Clarke Hook (1819-1907), who travelled all around the coastline from the 1850s onwards, seeking out places where tourism had not yet penetrated and depicting the lives of his models with sympathetic understanding. The exhibition includes a selection of work by Hook, together with iconic Newlyn works such as 'The Health of the Bride' by Stanhope Forbes and 'A Hopeless Dawn' by Frank Bramley. This display was curated for Tate by Juliet McMaster and Christiana Payne, working with Tate curator, Alison Smith, and is accompanied by a substantial illustrated book 'Where the Sea Meets the Land: Artists on the Coast in Nineteenth-Century Britain' by Christiana Payne (Sansom & Co).

Edwin Harris was one of the first Newlyn School artists to arrive in the village (alongside his friend and fellow Birmingham artist, Walter Langley). This one-room focus exhibition gives a glimpse into the unassuming yet prodigious talent of this somewhat shadowy figure, while an accompanying book by Roger Langley (published by Truran) offers insights into his life and character.

Selection of Newlyn School paintings on view in galleries 2 - 4

Click here for more information on forthcoming exhibitions

Directions to Gallery and Museum