Newlyn School

Newlyn School. A name applied to the painters who worked in the Cornish fishing village of Newlyn from the 1880s, particularly those directly linked with Stanhope Forbes, who was the founder and leader of the school. One of the attractions of Newlyn was the mild climate, which made it particularly suitable for outdoor work, and Forbes and his associates were among the pioneers of plein-air painting in Britain. The village also made a strong appeal to artists because of its picturesque charm, which was strongly reminiscent of Brittany—at that time a favourite haunt of painters. Many of them shared Forbes's first impression of Newlyn: ‘Here every corner was a picture, and, more important from the point of view of the figure-painter, the people seemed to fall naturally into their places, and to harmonize with their surroundings.’ Apart from Forbes and his wife Elizabeth, the artists most closely associated with Newlyn in its heyday include: Frank Bramley (1857–1915); Norman Garstin (1847–1926); Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854–1931), better known for his later work, particularly his allegorical pictures of children; Fred Hall (1860–1948); Walter Langley (1852–1922); and Henry Scott Tuke. Many of the Newlyn artists were members of the New English Art Club, but they also showed their work at the Royal Academy. The golden period of Newlyn was over by the turn of the century; thereafter it was vulgarized by an influx of inferior talent, and St Ives came to have a greater attraction for 20th-century artists. However, distinguished painters continued to be associated with Newlyn: Harold and Laura Knight lived there, 1908–18, for example, and Dod and Ernest Procter studied with Forbes and settled in the village after their marriage in 1912. The landscape and seascape painter Lamorna Birch (1869–1955), a friend of Forbes and the Knights, lived a few miles from Newlyn at Lamorna (he was originally called Samuel John Birch but adopted the name of his home as a personal name).