Through the Lens:
Pictures from a Magic Lantern

21 January – 17 March 2012

On show at Penlee House Gallery and Museum from 21 January is an exhibition of long-lost photographs of the town and the surrounding district taken from a Magic Lantern slide show put together by an unknown local historian some 50 years ago.  The collection was purchased by Penlee House from David Lay’s Penzance Auction House in 2009, with grant aid from the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund – a national organisation which helps Museums to buy important items – and funding from the Friends of Penlee House.  Since then, a team of volunteers has worked to scan and research the images so that they are now available for the public to enjoy for the first time in many decades.

The Magic Lantern was developed in the 17th century as an early form of image projector. It uses a concave mirror to direct a light source through a translucent slide so that the image on the slide is projected through a lens onto a wall or screen.  When it was first invented, candles or oil lamps were used as the light source and the images projected were painted onto the slide, but the invention of photography in the 1830s and of the electric arc lamp in the 1860s led to eventual use of the Magic Lantern to project photographic images with great clarity.  The technology was instrumental in the development of moving pictures, but was also used for illustrated lectures, in the same way that we use PowerPoint today.

With the popularity of photography in the Victorian era, animation and illustrated stories slowly gave way to real life documentary images. Magic Lantern slideshows were a great attraction and lanterns became widely available for the well-to-do home.  If you could not afford one, there would no doubt be a show going on in the village hall or school, where an excited crowd would gather to look at photographs of faraway places and momentous happenings.  This particular collection was clearly amassed to tell the history of the Penwith area through the 19th and early 20th centuries, using unique images of significant local events, ranging from shipwrecks and fires to major building projects, intriguing visitations and important celebratory gatherings.  It is hoped visitors to this exhibition will find these images of not so faraway places exciting and insightful in the same way as the original audience did all those years ago, and discover a local past through the lens of this collection.

The exhibition has been curated by the Penlee House Photographic Research Group, led by John Wallis and supported by Penlee’s Technical Officer, Jeremy Rice.  John and Jeremy will give an illustrated talk on the Magic Lantern slide collection at Penlee House at 7.30pm on Monday 20 February: please call 01736 363625 for more information or to book (booking essential).  The show is sponsored by Perfect Pictures and prints of many of the images on show will be available for purchase.

‘Through the Lens: Pictures from a Magic Lantern’ is on show at Penlee House until 17 March.  Also on show is a large selection of paintings by Newlyn School artists (c.1880 - c.1930), together with some later paintings by 20th century Cornwall-based artists. 

CLICK HERE for a list of photographs in 'Through the Lens'.

CLICK HERE for a list of the paintings on display in other galleries at Penlee House.   

Previous exhibitions:

A Forgotten Prodigy:
Joan Manning Sanders (1913 - 2003)

On show at Penlee House from 19 November 2011 until 14 January 2012 was an exhibition of paintings by a once world famous child prodigy artist, Joan Manning Sanders, whose work had not seen the light of day for many decades. 

Joan’s story is truly remarkable.  Born in 1913 to bohemian, creatively talented parents and raised surrounded by the celebrated Newlyn School artists, it is perhaps unsurprising that an early glimpse of artistic talent was nurtured.  She received her first artistic commission from Father Bernard Walke of St Hilary Church when she was only 13 and the six paintings she produced remain on view on the parclose screen in the Church’s Lady Chapel.

This was just the start of Joan’s unparalleled youthful success. Her parents’ friends, including renowned artists such as Dod Procter, Laura Knight and Harold Harvey, admired and respected her work and all gave her encouragement. By the age of 16, she had exhibited several times in London, including taking the – still unsurpassed – record for the youngest painter to have work selected for the Royal Academy summer exhibition. Two hardback books were published about her work, one in the UK and one for the American market, and this, together with widespread media coverage, made her a household name. 

Having achieved such triumph in her teens, it seems tragic that her artistic career lasted barely a decade and fame soon faded into utter obscurity. Artistic fashion moved away from Joan’s figurative style and her attempts to mould herself into a more modernist technique were unsuccessful.  Paintings that had caused a sensation when first exhibited were consigned to the attic, taken off their stretchers and rolled to save space.  Works once purchased for substantial sums by enthusiastic collectors have vanished from record and cannot now be traced.  Thus the shining star of Joan the child prodigy vanished from our vision.

In order to stage an exhibition of Joan’s work, Penlee House had the tricky task of obtaining paintings that were fit to be exhibited.  Thankfully Joan’s son, John Floyd, had carefully preserved the canvasses his mother had left for the spiders, although years of being rolled and covered in dust made them impossible to show.  Two of the canvasses were taken to the renowned Painting Conservation department at the Courtauld Institute in London, where student Harriet Pearson brought them back to life, and another three were taken to conservator Alison Smith in Penzance.  Seen for the first time in eight decades, these astonishing works will be accompanied by information about the restoration process. 

In addition to the newly restored paintings, a handful of pictures have been tracked down and borrowed from collections across the country, making a total of around a dozen of Joan’s works.  The exhibition also includes paintings by some of her famous friends and mentors, such as Laura Knight, Dod Procter, Anne Walke and Harold Harvey, both from Penlee House’s own collection and on loan from public and private collections. 

Also on show was ‘Crafts for Christmas’, the annual selling exhibition of work by members of Cornwall Crafts, as well as a selection of Newlyn School paintings curated by pupils of Penpol School in Hayle.

Joan Manning Sanders: A Forgotten Prodigy was sponsored by Barbara Kirk Auctions and ran at Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, until 14 January.  The exhibition was accompanied by a small book about the artist, written by Owen Baker.

Different Ways of Seeing

Joan Gillchrest, Bryan Pearce & Fred Yates

17 September - 12 November 2011

‘Different Ways of Seeing’ brought together works by Bryan Pearce, Joan Gillchrest and Fred Yates, three much-loved 20th century artists who have many threads in common. 

United by a shared love for Cornwall and individual, charmingly naïve modes of expression, the three exhibited together several times during their lifetimes, but this was the first time their works have been shown together since their deaths.  More-or-less exact contemporaries, all three died within 18 months of one another – Pearce, the shortest lived, in January 2007 aged 77; Gillchrest almost exactly a year later, in her 90th year, and Yates in July 2008, aged 85.  All three found particular inspiration from West Cornwall and the show concentrates on this aspect of their work, covering subjects such as Mousehole, St Ives, Penzance and St Michael’s Mount.

Of the three, Pearce was the only native Cornishman, being born and spending his entire life in St Ives.  Although Gillchrest was born in Berkshire and Yates – like L.S. Lowry, to whom his work is often likened – in Manchester, they both fell under the spell of West Cornwall and lived on the Penwith peninsula for significant periods – in Gillchrest’s case, in her beloved Mousehole for most of her life.  Consequently, there is much overlap in subject matter for all three painters, and all are remembered locally with great personal affection, as well as being much-loved for their art.

The idea for the exhibition arose in response to public demand: fans of each artist have approached Penlee House independently to ask if we might stage an exhibition of their favourite’s work.  Although the Gallery is best known for showing earlier Cornish artists, and in particular the Newlyn School, there is a documentary quality to all three artists’ works that has a resonance with their forebears, as well as an instant popular appeal, so Gallery staff were delighted to embrace this exhibition.

‘Different Ways of Seeing’ was curated by Penlee House in partnership with representatives of each of the artists.  In the case of Joan Gillchrest, this was the Wren Gallery, Burford, with the assistance of Joan’s family; for Bryan Pearce, it was the artist’s estate, assisted by Janet Axten, and for Fred Yates, it was the John Martin Gallery, London.  As usual for Penlee House’s exhibitions, the show included paintings from public and private collections throughout the UK, and this show also included a number of works on loan from the Royal Cornwall Museum from their extensive Bryan Pearce bequest.

The exhibition was sponsored by David Lay FRICS, The Penzance Auction House, and was accompanied by a new illustrated book on the three painters, published by Sansom & Co and with an introduction by Antiques Roadshow expert Dendy Easton. 

The show is also accompanied by a short film on each of the painters, produced by Cathy Sayers at Vision On Communications and supported by the Little Parc Owles Trust and the Friends of Penlee House, which can be accessed by clicking the links below:

Click here for the film on Joan Gillchrest 
Click here for the film on Bryan Pearce 
Click here for the film on Fred Yates