- Venue
- Penlee House Gallery
- Location
- South West England
“Lyrical Light” at the Penlee House Museum A Preview
This exhibition accompanies another at the St Ives Tate, called Dawn of a Colony 1811-1888. Both exhibitions are the result of extensive research into the development of St Ives as an internationally renowned Art Colony. This showing, which is set in the more intimate and elegant Victorian setting of Penlee House, concerns the later period from 1889 to 1914. There are some very large and some unknown canvases are from a golden age of British art. Most of these are technically highly accomplished works which have been hung with considerable thought in the galleries to make the best possible use of the space available. This wonderful exhibition, like that at the Tate St Ives, is the result of the patient and painstaking research by David Tovey.
So in this exhibition, the Penlee has moved beyond its usual provenance (the Newlyn School paintings of Stanhope Forbes and Walter Langley and the Lamorna group of Laura Knight and Alfred Munnings) and returned once again to St Ives. As Alison Bevan, the director comments, the artists in St Ives were more individualistic in their work, less of a group with a defined purpose, than those in Newlyn. Marine paintings and especially boats and the effects of the light on the sea fascinated them. Works by Whistler and Sickert are present but in fact it was paintings that were already exhibited in America, Canada-birthplace of Elizabeth Forbes- and France that drew internationally painters to St Ives. It was only later that the significance of the colony was recognised in London. After the development of the Artists Club, formed by Louis Grier in 1888, which then evolved into the Arts Club two years later, that painters like Julius Olsson, Arnesby Brown, Adrian Stokes and Algernon Talmage worked together on techniques to represent what they saw in the clear light on the North Coast.
The atmosphere in the Art Colony in St Ives at the time was lively, creative and bohemian. Women artists like the Finnish artist –who was considered a child prodigy Helene Schjerfbeck were innovating figure painting. The lofts, pubs and general availability of subject matter and models and especially the purity of the light off the sea were all important factors. The result of 25 years of inspired work is represented here in creative profusion. There is also a series of interesting lunchtime talks to accompany the sumptuous feast of paintings.
The Penlee Museum has a lively atmosphere with the attractive fare on offer at the Orangery Café, excellent art bookshop and museum, which contains an interesting archaeology collection, and fills in the background on social and local history in Penzance and West Penwith.
