Famous Cornish paintings reveal their secrets
The Quarry Team by Stanhope Forbes
Against The Regatta by Stanhope Forbes
Dicky Ninelives
Vistors to the Royal Cornwall Museum admire Fish Sale On A Cornish Beach by Stanhope Forbes
Stabbed by a Suffragette, torn by a tumbling curator and “lost” for a generation – these are just some of the stories behind an extraordinary collection of paintings currently on show in Truro.
Painted by some of the greatest names in Cornish art – including Stanhope Forbes, Harold Harvey and Percy Craft – the exhibition at the Royal Cornwall Museum has been designed to celebrate the lives of working people.
Amongst Heroes: The Artist In Working Cornwall is divided into two sections – land and sea – depicting the labours of fishermen, miners, quarrymen, farm workers and seamstresses.
First shown at the prestigious Two Temple Place gallery in London, the exhibition is now in Cornwall until September. Curator Michael Harris described it as an “honour” to be re-staging the show in its place of origin.
With recognisable locations – from St Austell’s china clay pits to Lamorna Cove, a Camborne forge to Newlyn beach – Mr Harris said he expected the show to be extremely popular with local people as well as visitors.
“People will recognise familiar places and also the methods of working the land and sea, depicted by some of the most important and influential artists of their day,” he said.
Covering a period from the 1880s to the 1930s, the works span the changes happening in a variety of industries, with engines replacing sail and mechanisation taking over from man-power.
Among the gems – some not seen in public for decades – are In The Fields by Fred Hall, A China Clay Pit: Leswidden by Harold Harvey, Tucking A Shoal Of Pilchards by Percy Craft, In Tow by Henry Scott Tuke, The Line Fishing Season by Charles Walter Simpson and Home On The Morning Tide by Reginald Aspinsall.
In addition to the paintings, the exhibition features a number of associated artefacts, including fishing lines, stone bussas, net-mending gear, pilchard barrels, mine trucks and examples of Newlyn copper ware.
“This exhibition serves as a record of the great changes that Cornwall was undergoing during this period,” said Mr Harris. “This change can best be illustrated by contrasting Stanhope Forbes’s A Fish Sale On A Cornish Beach from 1885 with Harold Harvey’s St Just Tin Miners from 1939.
“The first embodies the ethos of the Newlyn School, whose aim was to paint in the open air with a muted pallet, while the latter is a comment on the decline of the tin mining industry and is a celebration of the Cornish Diaspora.”
As well as being significant works of art, several on show have unusual stories to tell. Take the paintings on this page, for instance. Who could realise when admiring Stanhope Forbes’s masterly brushstrokes that Suffragette Ethel Cox would take such a dislike to The Quarry Team that she felt compelled to stab it with her umbrella – an act for which she was arrested. Then there is Against The Regatta, another vast canvas by the doyen of the Newlyn School, which was torn in two when a curator tripped off his ladder and fell right the way through it. See if you can spot the join!
With work loaned by public and private collections, including Penlee Gallery & Museum, Falmouth’s National Maritime Museum, Newlyn School Gallery and the Jerwood Collection, Amongst Heroes: The Artist In Working Cornwall continues at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro until September 4. For details visit royalcornwallmuseum
