Harold Harvey, painting everyday life

 

This summer’s exhibition at Penlee House, Penzance was devoted to the paintings of Harold Harvey, the only Cornish born artist associated with the Newlyn circle of painters led by Stanhope Forbes and Laura and Harold Knight.  Harvey was an accomplished constructor of convincing figure compositions, ever alert to the awkwardness, discomfort or tension in the individuals portrayed.  Small social gatherings and domestic scenes were minutely observed and described in detail with particular attention to choices of clothing and facial expressions.  Furnishings and decorative accessories in the home came under similar scrutiny. The work of the intensively observed fishing fleet held little interest and he saw the world of the countryside through the lens of manual labour.  Most Newlyn painters ignored the industrial aspect of Cornish life, unwilling to confront the violence done to the local landscape by the activities of extractive industry, notably the excavation of China Clay and the mining of tin and copper.  Distractions of the modern world of popular entertainment and the transport revolution were studiously avoided by almost all local artists but Harvey kept returning to these subjects throughout his career.  Several of his finest paintings - featuring sunbathers and swimmers, girls outside the cinema, travellers on the top deck of a bus - were a product of this fascination.

His figure drawing was uneven in quality, lacking the bravura of Laura Knight or the conviction of Stanhope Forbes, flabbiness kept creeping in. In the 1930s, under the influence of contemporary trends (Stanley Spencer?), he cautiously experimented with figure distortion and elongation to especially good effect in the bathers painting (August 1939).  Two conflicting tendencies can be seen in his use of colour where a preference for clear, vibrant hues applied with firm, controlled brushwork existed alongside a drift into more pastel hues and softer, Renoir-influenced application of paint.  The latter technique being more apparent in portraiture, especially of child subjects.  The key element in his subject choices is his local origin - incomers and outsiders fell heavily for the most picturesque features of Cornish life (fishing, farming and a ravishing coastline in dazzling sunshine).  For Harvey these aspects were taken for granted and he rarely turned to them.  His eyes were focused on a localised experience of everyday life - the domestic middle class interior, the world of work and manual labour, the arrival of mass tourism. Inside the home he was an acute observer of the enigmatic gesture, the unusual body posture and the ambivalent glance, sometimes hinting at an underlying disquiet or noting the vagaries of fashion and the faintly absurd.  Friends and acquaintances described him as affable and good natured, though somewhat taciturn.  In later life he converted to Catholicism but nothing of his spiritual life made its way into his work which remained resolutely materialist.

Paintings from Penlee House Museum, Penzance

We begin with a flatly painted image of a pint of beer in a straight glass resting on an otherwise empty table in the grip of a sturdy hand - it’s a factual exercise and nothing more.  Attached to the hand is Robert Morson Hughes, a fellow artist and associate of the painter Harold Knight - the year is 1915, the First World War is in progress and Knight, a conscientious objector, is about to be put to work as a farm labourer.  The subject, Hughes, was a Lamorna based painter of mainly topographical subjects. Here he has the air of a country landowner in a slightly oversized suit, from beneath the downturned brim of his hat he stares with suspicion out of the painting. Knight has conveyed strength of character and a sense of presence in a stolid, unemphatic manner.

Harold Knight (1873-1953), Portrait of Robert Morson Hughes (c 1915)

Robert Morson Hughes (1873-1953), Carn Boscawen (1928?)

Visits to local museums are always a pleasure and Penlee House Museum is a fine example that has the dual function of providing a lively overview of local history with a comprehensive collection of interesting paintings by locally based artists with historically national reputations.  The core of the collection is made up of painters active in the 19th. and early 20th. century, working in the Penzance - Newlyn region of Cornwall.  Aesthetically conservative, averse to experimentation and inheritors of a tradition of realism that goes back to Courbet (as diluted by Bastien-Lepage), these painters built up an impressive visual archive of the minutiae of Victorian and Edwardian daily life in West Cornwall alongside a comprehensive record of the abundant varied landscape and coastal scenery in the county. Many had worked in the art colonies of Brittany and become committed to painting en plein-air but Impressionism remained a step too far.

Laura Knight (1877-1970),  My Lady of the Rocks  ND

Although this body of work has come to be regarded as an essential component of the Cornish cultural identity it’s notable that many aspects of that identity were, for the most part, studiously ignored.  While the fishing industry was much celebrated for its pictorial values, the world of mining, heavy engineering and new technologies got little or no attention - the only exceptions being quarrying, a reliably popular landscape subject and the railways that became a regular source of income for Stanhope Forbes.  All this despite Cornwall having a strong claim to being the global birthplace of steam power. The Celtic heritage that separated Cornwall from the Anglo-Saxon territory east of the Tamar likewise went unremarked along with the great Neolithic assemblages of menhirs and stone circles, at least until the 1940s when Ithell Colquhoun turned up in Lamorna.  Most of these painters were drawn to Cornwall from elsewhere in the country and many formed strong personal links with the indigenous community, their interests didn’t encompass the profound sense of Cornish exceptionalism held by the local intelligentsia. 

Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947), Abbey Slip (1921)

Laura Knight  (1877-1970), Spring (1916)

This is not to undervalue the contribution that these artists have made to the popular image of Cornwall as a special place.  Their brushes may have been preoccupied with surface values but by virtue of sheer representational brilliance their work acquired lasting value.  Laura Knight and Stanhope Forbes stand apart in the quality and consistency of their work though Knight’s paintings have a bravura and vitality that often make Forbes look pedestrian by comparison. By the time Laura and Harold Knight moved to Newlyn in 1907, Forbes was well established as the leader of the Newlyn painters where he’d been active since 1884.  The Knights settled in Lamorna but were soon accepted into Forbes’s circle.  While Harold’s taciturn nature caused him to hold back, Laura played a full and active part in the social life of the artistic community.  For his part, Forbes was especially impressed by Laura’s paintings.  Most Newlyn painters stayed loyal to their locality a few shuttled back and forth to St. Ives where new ideas were more readily accepted.  Forbes reacted with disproportionate hostility when Whistler and Sickert spent time in St. Ives. This went both ways - Sickert especially loathed the paintings of Newlyn’s Frank Bramley whose A Hopeless Dawn was rapturously received by an audience hungry for pathos at the Royal Academy (RA) in 1888.

Norman Garstin  (1847-1926),  The Rain it Raineth Every Day (1889) 

Most of the Newlyners were reluctant to stray far from their patch - an exception was Irish born Norman Garstin whose global wanderings set him apart. His travels took him to Africa, North America and all over Europe and inspired him to lead groups of students on sketching trips to continental art centres.  In 1889 his major painting of a rainswept Penzance seafront (The Rain It Raineth Every Day), was rejected by the RA for being ‘too French’ with its subtle tonal observations.  Further humiliation lay in wait - when Garstin later presented the painting to Penzance Town Council it was hidden away for fear it would deter visitors.  Garstin’s vindication may have been a long time coming but today’s visitors have voted it their favourite painting in the museum.  A future post will look at how  local history is served in the museum 

Samuel ‘Lamorna’ Birch  (1869-1955),  The Quiet of our Valley (1940)

Samuel ‘Lamorna’ Birch  (1869-1955),  trio of landscapes, Lamorna Valley in Summer (right)

Frank Gascoigne Heath  (1873-1938),  A Game of Cut-throat Euchre  (1909)

Frank Gascoigne Heath  (1873-1938),  The Little Maid (1923)

Charles Simpson  (1885-1971),  Dying Light, Carn Barges  ND

Stanley Gardiner (1888-1952),  The Old Quay, Lamorna (Upper), Samuel ‘Lamorna’ Birch (1869-1955), Lamorna Cove (Lower)

Harold Harvey (1874-1941), Laura and Paul Jewill Hill  (1915)

Frank Bramley (1857-1915),  Eyes and No Eyes (1887)

 

Great Railway Stations No. 21, Penzance

The westward rails run out at Penzance, there’s nowhere else to go except back.  After 326 miles from Paddington it’s the end of the line. A first station opened in 1852 and in 1859 it was connected to London with the opening of the Royal Albert Bridge across the River Tamar. In 1876 a new and larger station was built and for a century or so, the Cornish Main Line was the first choice of travellers and holiday makers heading for the resorts of the far South West. When traffic declined sharply as passengers piled into family cars for the journey west, rail managers responded by cutting services and track work to balance the books.  Today’s station is substantially the layout built by the GWR in 1937 but despite all the rebuilds and extensions nobody ever thought it worth providing the sort of grand entrance its importance might have merited.  The single modest entrance to the cramped concourse is via the side of the building.  Only the overall roof offers any sense of occasion.  If the Thatcher government had implemented the recommendations of the Serpell Report in 1983 there would now be no railway lines in Cornwall (or Devon and Somerset for that matter).

The overview below of Penzance Station approximates the vantage point of Stanhope Forbes when he painted "A Terminus in the West" in 1925 when it was a 2 platform station. The GWR commissioned Forbes to make paintings of Cornish subjects for publicity purposes and the Penzance station painting is now in the collection of the National Railway Museum. Forbes was born in Dublin where his father was manager of the Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland suggesting an affinity with railway subjects. He also produced poster designs for the LMS in his characteristically robust realism style, all of which brought some relief from the pilchards and fisherfolk.  Penzance is a station to be valued for its remoteness, its individuality - the only overnight sleeper train to run in England terminates here - and the blunt fact that there’s no further to go.

 

Lands End, Kernow’s Last Gasp

Visitors from over the border in Tiverton pose for the camera at Lands End.  Dated on the reverse - July 1st. 1960.  Probably born in the last decade of the 19th. century, they are of the generation that survived two world wars and came well experienced in the hard graft of stoicism. Defined by the formality of their dress - suits or blazers, collar and tie and well polished shoes for the men. The men could be brothers and their wives could be sisters.  The Lands End estate has always been in private hands. An attempt by the National Trust to purchase it in 1987 failed when Peter de Savary outbid the organisation.  Today’s site owner is Heritage Great Britain Plc who operate a minor empire of mid-level attractions including a petting zoo, an audio-visual experience, traditional craft studios, a shopping centre, the First and Last public house and a hotel and restaurant complex.  Plus a car park from which the coastal footpaths can be reached.  It’s easy to imagine the more environmentally sensitive development that the National Trust would have provided but it has to be conceded that it would have been every bit as commercially minded in extracting value as the present owners.

The version of Cornwall with the greatest cultural heft is the magical land of myth and legend where the landscape itself vibrates with mystical powers under the protection of St. Piran. From Jethro to Ithell Colquhoun, locals speak of the sense of relief and heightened sensory impressions when the wretched land of the lumpen Devonians is left behind as they cross the Tamar into the enchanted homeland.  My youngest son and I experienced something of this in the summer of 2002 as our train from Exeter inched its way through Saltash station at less than walking pace. A small group of wayward urchins, no more than 11 or 12 years of age, was inspired to offer a traditional Cornish welcome to its captive audience. Jumping to attention from the abandoned luggage trolleys on which they had been reclining they conjured up imaginary erections of stupendous proportions via the medium of gesture and mime which they directed at the gawping passengers.  With well rehearsed movements of the hand in which enthusiasm triumphed over subtlety they brought their imaginary organs to a towering climax as the holidaymakers were ever so slowly conveyed in silence closer to the beach and surf.  It was a rare moment when the affluent seasonal visitors came face to face with the boredom and resentment of the indigenous population.  During the journey a young female passenger had been passing to and fro through the carriage clad in a T-shirt bearing the slogan, “Stop staring at my fucking tits” suggesting that if the urchins had been bold enough to board the train they might not have wanted for like-minded company.  Not the warmest of welcomes to the sacred county of Kernow.

Every MP in Cornwall is a Conservative.  It’s worth recalling that when the Cornish complain, as they do, that they’re overlooked, ignored and left behind by Westminster.  Spokesmen for the fishing community in Newlyn can outperform their counterparts in Peterhead and Brixham when it comes to complaining.  Since their former colleagues sold off their fishing quotas to European competitors they’ve never stopped wingeing about how hard done by they are.  Cornwall is certainly a complicated county with a powerful sense of identity that can shade into exceptionalism, equal to anything found in Yorkshire.  Celtic roots are carefully cultivated by Mebyon Kernow (Cornish Nationalists and campaigners for a Cornish Parliament), Cornish bards and Cornish language revivalists.  An abundance of megaliths, menhirs, cromlechs and stone circles encourages a spiritual sense of place for some, though there would be many more standing stones if Cornish landowners had refrained from destroying them when they got in the way of the plough. While many in Cornwall find a virtuous path into the spirit world, the dark shadow of Aleister Crowley and his “Scarlet Women” still lingers over West Penwith. The landscape value is exceptionally high and includes wild and windswept coastlines, dark and sinister uplands battered by deluges, driven by deep Atlantic depressions, as well as wide and fair, expansive beaches bathed in diffused sunlight of an unusual intensity, all of which feeds the imagination of artists, writers and craft workers of whom the county has many more than its fair share.  And so it came to pass that the county has a fine collection of visual arts venues - Tate St. Ives, Barbara Hepworth’s Studio, Leach Pottery, Newlyn Gallery, Penlee House in Penzance and the Jackson Foundation Gallery in St. Just.

Visitors to the county may well encounter a Cornish Engine House on their travels and the more curious will discover that the Industrial Revolution came early to Cornwall leaving multiple abandoned relics to tell a story of pioneering mining technology that was exported around the world from Mexico to Montana and Australia to Argentina.  Cornwall’s industrial secret, the extraction of China Clay, is largely confined to a little visited area of Mid Cornwall with its own landscape of devastation and towering mountains of waste.  It’s a spectacle that’s unlikely to be encountered by chance but it has its own fascination, not least because it exists just a few miles from coastal villages celebrated for their unspoilt beauty. The prospect of profitable lithium mining has attracted some interest and tin mining may yet be revived at South Crofty.  Meanwhile Richard Branson’s venture, Spaceport Cornwall, rests in abeyance at the time of writing having goofed up its initial satellite launch - the search for viable investment goes on. The setback has been a useful corrective to the great emotional wave of over-claiming on the part of local politicians and local media whose crystal balls glowed with unlikely visions of gleaming rocketry surging into Cornish skies to conquer the solar system. The presence of the Branson name should have served as a warning.

David Cameron made a point of taking his family holidays in Cornwall and complained about the primitive mobile phone and wi-fi connectivity.  If he noticed the evidence of social deprivation he never said so.  Yet in any Cornish town that evidence is hard to miss - just check out the local Wetherspoon’s, ride a local bus or take in a car boot sale.  There’s only one major hospital in the county and it always seems to be in the news for all the wrong reasons. Second home buyers have distorted the housing market, boosting property values far out of the reach of most locals whose earnings, often from tourism and hospitality, are well below national averages.  Zero hours contracts and a dependence on seasonal casual working force many to take on two or more jobs to make ends meet, placing family life under often intolerable pressures.  By way of escape the nation’s drug dealers offer easy access to a full range of altered states in even the most remote locations.  The Cornish main line railway and a clutch of branch lines survive in a much reduced form from their heyday but most people in employment have to run a car to reach their workplace, putting further strain on depleted household budgets.  The existence of a significant colony of bungalow dwellers living out their retirement is the bedrock of the Conservative vote along with the reliably Tory agricultural community. It will be interesting to see if the Conservatives can maintain their Cornish supremacy at the next election although the most exciting outcome would be for Mebyon Kernow to break through to a seat in Westminster.

 

Postcard of the Day No. 111, Jacob’s Ladder, Falmouth

This post is number 111 in this series.  The same number of steps can be found on Falmouth’s Jacob’s Ladder staircase, the work of a local builder named Jacob Hamblen who had them constructed to connect two of his properties at different altitudes.  Flights of steps confined between two buildings are a common feature in communities built on hills and there are other examples where locals have turned to the Scriptures and bestowed the name of Jacob’s Ladder. At least in this instance there was an additional justification for the choice of name.  Local photographers were quick to spot the postcard potential hastening to Killigrew Street and point their cameras in its direction, making it one of the most common subjects in this Cornish town.  The steps date from the 1840s and have the distinction of being listed at Grade II by Historic England.  The building on the right has since been demolished to be replaced by a branch of Lloyd’s Bank.  On the left, Falmouth Methodist Church has survived to the present.  Despite multiple passes, the StreetView camera has never captured the steps.  These two examples are the closest it has come to doing so.