Under the Cornish sun

From the late 19th century, artists attached themselves like barnacles to Cornwall's shores, forming colonies that changed both art and the lives of local people

-  Michael Prodger

IN the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Britain’s coastline was dotted with artists’ colonies. From Walberswick in Suffolk and Staithes in Yorkshire to Cullercoats near the Tyne and Kirkcudbright in Galloway, the quays and coves of small fishing villages were cluttered with easels, as well as nets. There were inland gatherings, too, such as the one at Betws-y-Coed in Snowdonia that took root in the 1840s, but most painters headed to the seaside.

The most celebrated colonies were in Corn- wall. Those that grew there from the 1880s— in St Ives, Newlyn, Lamorna and Polperro —became famous around the world. This was the time when artists’ colonies attached themselves like barnacles to the shores of Europe and the US, when little-known harbour towns, such as Pont-Aven (which attracted Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard) and Concarneau (which fascinated Paul Signac) in Brittany and Skagen in Denmark, filled with an international crowd of painters keen to get away from the stuffiness of academic studios, to work outdoors and live and mix with like-minded fellows. Cornwall was a natural home for these groupings: it shared cultural links and geographical similarities with Brittany, it was on the edge of the country, but still accessible, and artists already had an idea of what it could offer.