New at the Boathouse

According to Iris Green in her booklet ‘On Newlyn Hill’, George Sherwood Hunter and his wife Constant Mary were living at the Malt House on Chywoone Hill by 1902, having moved there after the Gotches had left. He was soon an integral part of the Newlyn Community of Artists, helping Elizabeth and Stanhope Forbes in their School of Art. Constant Mary was keenly involved in the Newlyn Artists Amateur Dramatic Society. Hunter’s own studio was situated in Bateman’s Meadow near Forbes’ Anchor Studios.

George Hunter is not one of the better-known Newlyn artists, but according to Iris, sixteen of his  paintings were hung in the Royal Academy and over sixty at the Royal College of British Artists. Hunter died on 18 June 1919 aged seventy-three years and Constant Mary a few months later. In 1990 over thirty of Hunter’s Newlyn paintings were sold at Christie, including the painting shown above of the artist’s greenhouse under snow, dated  12/12/1903. Snow was rare in Newlyn and deserved to be recorded!

The archive is fortunate to have been given a huge collection of material about the Hunters by Ian Hunter who has done copious research on his relative. We have an extensive catalogue raisonné of his paintings, with many images in his file at the Boathouse and a huge collection of digital images. Do come and have a look.