Newlyn When the Artists Came

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Newlyn When the Artists Came

Pamela Lomax

Published by Shears & Hogg in 2021

176 pages

168 illustrations

Soft Back Edition

ISBN 978 0 9540249 9 4 Price £15.00 + £4 postage 

Hard Back Edition

ISBN 978 0 9540249 8 7 Price £25.00 + £5 postage

The fishing village at the edge of Mount’s Bay is the subject of this detailed and carefully researched history. Newlyn When the Artists Came, tells the story of Newlyn from 1881-1914 through the eyes of Caroline Gotch, herself an artist, who witnessed the close links formed by the artists with the community they loved and served.

During this time, artists came to Newlyn to form what became known as the Newlyn Colony of Artists. They won national fame and many of them won international reputations. Amongst the first artists that came were Frank Bramley, Walter Langley, Stanhope Forbes and Thomas Cooper Gotch. They were responsible for persuading the famous entrepreneur Passmore Edwards to finance the building of a Newlyn Art Gallery where they could show and sell their work.

The Forbes and Gotch families were to stay in Newlyn, building their houses Higher Faugan and Wheal Betsy above the village. Stanhope Forbes and his artist wife Elizabeth also opened a School of Painting that was to attract a new generation of artists to Newlyn.

This is a tale of fishermen and fish dealers, boat owners and harbour personnel, who made Newlyn a great fishing port. It tells the story of the new harbour that led to the historically separate communities of Newlyn Town and Street-an-Nowan becoming linked by a new Strand Road. It is also a story of the philanthropic local gentry, like the Bolithos and the Le Grices, who contributed to the development of the town. But it is mainly the story of ordinary people and their churches, chapels and schools.