When questioned for the 1891 census, Betsy Lanyon, an 84-year-old widow from Newlyn, decided she had better register a late change of career. She told her inquisitors that she was no longer a ‘fishwife’ — her new occupation was ‘artist’s model’.
In the decades around the turn of the last century, Newlyn, a fishing port a few miles west of Penzance, was overrun with artists. Stanhope Forbes had established his position as father of a local ‘school’ of painters; his followers were to be seen daily on the nearby beaches, battling against the Cornish wind as they attempted to keep their canvases upright. Villagers cashed in on the influx, renting out lofts as studios, using their carts to transport paintings to the railway, modelling for a few shillings. Similar mutually beneficial relationships were being struck up in nearby St Ives, and at Lamorna, a clutch of houses around a pretty cove further out towards Land’s End. Laura Knight had to use all her charm to win over residents who objected to her working on the cliffs with nude models. Alfred Munnings caused consternation in Methodist Newlyn when he was held responsible for getting a group of his students ‘hopelessly drunk’.
The Penlee House Gallery, set in the grand former residence of a rich Penzance merchant, has an enviable collection of Cornish pictures. Its year-round programme of exhibitions has now started rivalling Tate St Ives as a draw for art-lovers. John Miller, Harold Harvey and Elizabeth Forbes have been among the subjects of recent retrospectives; this summer it casts its eye further, in a show examining why a handful of small coastal towns and villages across the country proved a magnet to late Victorian and Edwardian painters.
Just as the railway turned Blackpool, Bridlington and Scarborough into tourist towns, so it opened up the extremities of Britain to artists.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in