Code: 2127
Dimensions:
A beautiful very early 20th century Newlyn School oil on panel depicting a lady picking flowers in the garden of a large country house. Excellent quality work presented in it's original watts style gilt frame. James Lanham, St Ives, Cornwall stamp on the reverse.
James Lanham (1869-1907) was a well respected artist's materials supplier who supplied many important painters including James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Stanhope Alexander Forbes and Sir Alfred Munnings, as well as making weekly trips to the Newlyn artists colony.
Artist/School: Newlyn School, early 20th century
Title: Picking Flowers
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: 12.5 x 15.5 inches (32 x 39 cm) including frame
The Newlyn School was an art colony of artists based in or near Newlyn, a fishing village adjacent to Penzance, on the south coast of Cornwall, from the 1880s until the early twentieth century. The establishment of the Newlyn School was reminiscent of the Barbizon School in France, where artists fled Paris to paint in a more pure setting emphasising natural light.
These schools along with a related California movement were also known as En plein air. Some of the first British artists to settle in the area had already travelled in Brittany, but found in Newlyn a comparable English environment with a number of things guaranteed to attract them: fantastic light, cheap living, and the availability of inexpensive models.
The artists were fascinated by the fishermen's working life at sea and the everyday life in the harbour and nearby villages. Some paintings showed the hazards and tragedy of the community's life, such as women anxiously looking out to sea as the boats go out, or a young woman crying on hearing news of a disaster.
Walter Langley is generally recognised as the pioneer of the Newlyn art colony and Stanhope Forbes, who settled there in 1884, as the father of it.
