16 January - 13 March 2010
Monday to Saturday (closed Sundays)
CURRENT HOURS
10.30am - 4.30pm (last admission 4.00pm)
Admission £3.00 adults, £2.00 concessions, under 18s FREE
SUMMER HOURS
From Easter Saturday -
30 September:
10.00am - 5.00pm
(last admission 4.30pm)
On the left here is a list of some of the 'Newlyn School' and Lamorna Group artists (1880-1930) represented in Penlee House's collections, together with a few other key artists whose work we hold.
Click on each name to find out more and view the works we have in our collections.
Newlyn is a small fishing port lying about a mile and a half from Penzance, on the south coast of Cornwall’s Penwith peninsula.
The area’s spectacular scenery, with its granite cliffs and sparkling seas, has attracted visiting artists since the early 19th century. In the 1880s, numerous British painters began to arrive in Newlyn, many of whom had trained in Paris or Antwerp. Most had also spent time painting in Brittany; in Newlyn they found a similar source of inspiration, but closer to home and with a direct rail link to London.
Like Brittany, Newlyn offered scenes and lives scarcely touched by the industrial revolution, with plentiful, cheap accommodation and willing models. Soon, a host of artists settled, forming the colony known as the 'Newlyn School'.
The first resident artist was Walter Langley, who moved to Newlyn in 1882. In 1884, Stanhope Forbes arrived, writing to his mother that "Newlyn is a sort of English Concarneau and is the haunt of many artists".
By September 1884, there were at least twenty-seven resident artists, including Frank Wright Bourdillon, Frank Bramley, Percy Craft, Elizabeth Forbes, Norman Garstin, Thomas Cooper Gotch, Frederick Hall, Edwin Harris, Harold Harvey, Albert Chevallier Tayler, Ralph Todd and Henry Scott Tuke. Many more artists visited the village during this period, both for long and short periods, while others who were recognised as part of the ‘Newlyn School’ based themselves in St Ives, Lelant or Falmouth.
Initially, the artists were united by a desire to paint ‘en plein air’, depicting the lives of the villagers in a rural naturalist style. As the colony declined and the common ethos evaporated, Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes founded their School of Painting, bringing a new generation of artists to Newlyn, including Dod and Ernest Procter and Frank Gascoigne Heath.
This re-energising of the colony attracted further artists, such as Samuel John ‘Lamorna’ Birch, Alfred Munnings, ‘Seal’ Weatherby and Harold and Laura Knight, many of whom later settled in Lamorna, forming the Lamorna group, often referred to as the later Newlyn School.
In its strictest sense, the term 'Newlyn School' describes the group of artists, based in this small Cornish fishing village in the late 19th century, who had a united ethos, similar painting style and shared subjects. They were primarily concerned with capturing the real lives of the fishing and farming communities in this remote part of Britain. Between 1880 and 1900, over 130 artists spent some time working in this small fishing village, the most famous of whom is undoubtedly Stanhope Forbes, often dubbed 'the father of the Newlyn School'.