The first appearance of Miss Flemming in the NAG Sales records is in November 1897, when she sold Cactus Dahlias for 5 guineas. In 1899 her Wallflowers and Sketch at Lamorna were both purchased by a local buyer. Her painting An Autumn Evening was sold in September 1900 at NAG to the visiting architect (Sir) Aston WEBB, ARA, who also purchased Samuel John Lamorna BIRCH's The Little Wood at the same exhibition.
In 1902 she showed and sold Red Hot Pokers and Japanese Anemones, also at NAG. In summer 1905 she exhibited two views of Mevagissey Harbour at NAG.
Sculptor who trained as a painter at the FORBES SCHOOL, at the Ruskin School in Oxford, and the Slade. In 1986 she commissioned and published an illustrated monograph in memory of her father William Teulon Blandford FLETCHER (1858-1936) and his work.
Mary Fletcher was born in Derby and studied Fine Art and Art History at Nottingham University, where she achieved her BA (Hons). She is also a trained art therapist, and adept at painting, ceramics and print-making and the connection they make to life experiences and helping others to express themselves. Her interests lie in feminist art criticism and in expression of the world of ideas through art.
In 1994 she initiated the art group 'Taking Space', a collective of women artists who show their work together at various venues in Cornwall.
Mary Fletcher’s short film, “My Uncle was always at Grandma’s” was awarded the jury prize in 'The Edge’, the category for experimental films, at Cornwall Film Festival in November 2010.
In autumn of 2016 her painting 'Burkha Selfie' was selected for the RWA's Annual Open Exhibition in Bristol.
Mary Fletcher is a regular exhibitor at STISA open shows. Her videos can be seen on Vimeo and on YouTube.
The son of a linen draper (born 8 November 1858, London GRO), much against his father's wishes Fletcher studied at South Kensington School of Art from age sixteen to twenty, where he won the Silver Medal and the Queen's prize. During that period he also visited Brittany and made acquaintance with Stanhope FORBES and his friends for the first time.
At Verlat's Academie Royale in Antwerp, he joined the life class and made firm friends with Frank BRAMLEY, Frederick HALL (Fred) and Walter OSBORNE. He spent some time painting at Pont-Aven and Dinan in France, befriending Frederick MILLARD (Fred) and meeting Jules BASTIEN-LEPAGE along the way. In the RA shows of 1884, he was to show four paintings executed at Pont Aven and Quimperle, three of which were immediately purchased.
He then spent eight months of 1885 in Newlyn working on a single large canvas - Dame Grigson's Academy - before leaving the artists' colony forever. Stanhope FORBES described him as 'a good friend, but morose.' He continued to travel, mainly in the rural areas of Berkshire, sometimes with Walter Osborne, and after some foreign travel married his fiancée of six years, Norah Harris. They continued to travel to such an extent that they thought of themselves as wandering artists. Finally they were to establish homes, first in Dorking (1904) where their daughter Rosamund M B FLETCHER was born, and lastly in Abingdon, near Oxford from 1915.
Fletcher died, age 77, on 27 June, 1936 at Abingdon, Oxfordshire (GRO).
Helene Fletcher moved to St Blazey, near St Austell, in April 2013. An abstract artist, she describes the process of painting as being 'in conversation with the canvas'. She has exhibited widely in Yorkshire.
Originally from south Wales, Tracy Flett is a self-taught artist with a degree in Creative Practices. She works from a garden studio in west Penwith. In 2022 she joined Taking Space, a group of women artists.
Mary was the sister of the sculptor, F W Sargant, and was born in London (21 July 1857). She studied art under Luc-Olivier Merson in Paris, and at the Slade School with Alphonse Legros. Whybrow includes Florence as an artist of the St Ives Colony in the period 1883-1900 (p 210), but she is not mentioned further within the text and may have been a short-term visitor only.
In 1888 she married an American musician, and lived in Nutley, New Jersey. The couple had a son and a daughter. In 1892 her husband died and she returned to Britain, living at Marlow, Bucks and in Cheyne Row, Chelsea (1913ff), but retaining an American base. She is remembered mainly for her power as a painter of frescos, and for the strong force with which she tore her work away from the confines and techniques of academic art. This, of course, sits well within the social realism and impressionist tendencies found amongst the Newlyn painters. She died in Twickenham, Middlesex, 14 December 1954.
Two pencil and sepia wash paintings by this artist were offered at auction in 2005, one of which was On St Michael's Mount, Cornwall (1843, inscribed and dated). The catalogue comment read as follows: "John Flower is regarded as one of Leicester's foremost 19th Century topographical artists. Many of the buildings illustrated in this collection have long since been demolished. He died in Upper Regent Street, Leicester in 1861 and is buried in Welford Road Cemetery."
Wood comments that he painted all over England in the style of his master, de Wint of London.
The artist is listed in Lake's Falmouth Directory of 1921 with an address at the Chamber of Commerce, Arwenack Street. His occupation was 'Artist' and he is known to have exhibited in the RCPS Exhibition of 1910 with four paintings.
His titles include Steam Yacht and Yacht in an Estuary; A Schooner in a calm sea; Helford River from Durgan and Sailing boat (all in private collection).
Maria Floyd takes her inspiration both from the north Cornwall coast and from Dartmoor. In 1993 she graduated from London's Goldsmiths College with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and History of Art. Later she went on to study Children's Book Illustration at Chelsea College of Art & Design.
Her plein-air paintings reflect the drama of the coast and landscape around her. Her work has been widely exhibited in Cornwall and Devon.
Peter Fluck was born in Cambridge, England, and now lives and works on The Lizard in Cornwall. For a full biography see www.peterfluck.co.uk.
With his artist wife Anne-Cecile DE BRUYNE, he continues to create and make art in myriad forms. Well known for his successful co-creations (with partner Roger Law, now in Australia making ceramics) in caricature and kinetic formats for the television series, Spitting Image, his appealing and fascinating life is well revealed in the on-line interview by www.artcornwall.org .
Hazel Folland makes hand built animal sculptural ceramics, vessels and jewellery.
Shirley Foote grew up in Wiltshire and was a student at the West of England College of Art. She worked in ceramics until she started painting full-time in 1993. She lives and works in west Cornwall. Shirley has exhibited at Cornwall Contemporary in Penzance and at Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn.
Michelle Foote is a ceramicist based in Carbis Bay. Her work is inspired by Scandinavian folk art, Art Nouveau and nature.
Canadian-born artist (29 December 1859) who became a central figure in the art circles of West Cornwall, as well as being a nationally known and respected painter. Her early studies in art included periods at the Kensington Art School aged 14, while living by chance next door to D G Rossetti (but never meeting), and studying the work of the Pre-Raphaelites; then studying at the Art Students' League, New York (1878-81) with William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). Shorter visits, always accompanied by her mother, were made to Munich where she met Marianne Preindlsberger (later Marianne L M STOKES), and Pont Aven where she was tutored in etching.
In 1884 she joined up with the Art Students' League again to visit and work in Holland. In that same year her outstanding painting Zandvoort Fisher Girl was exhibited, a painting destined to become one of her hallmarks, not unlike School is Out. In the period 1883-89 she participated in the name of Elizabeth Armstrong (Specialty: Domestic) in more than sixty-three principal London exhibitions. Her outstanding early work in etching, fortunately collected by her mentor in the art, Mortimer MENPES, is catalogued, but did not develop later in her career.
Scott, in Painting at the Edge, notices a fleeting visit from Elizabeth Armstrong (and her mother) at Walberswick, Suffolk, from which two etchings were produced. After marriage to Stanhope FORBES, her work diminished in quantity though not in quality, and despite preferring the more cosmopolitan art crowd of St Ives, she was always most closely associated with the so-called 'Newlyn school' of artists.
She was a Medallist in the Paris Universal Exhibition 1889, a Gold Medallist in Oil painting in the Chicago Exposition 1893 and the winner of a Merit Award in the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists Exhibition 1910. Together with her husband, Stanhope FORBES, she developed and sustained the FORBES School of Painting from its institution in 1899 until her untimely death in 1912. By the end of the 1890s Elizabeth was being feted as the leading female artist in Britain.
Her nickname 'Mibs' was a shortening of 'Forces Mibs', a backslang version of chatting between the friends at Myrtle Cottage (aka 'The Myrtage') where the JESSE cousins (Cicely JESSE and Wynifried Tennyson JESSE aka Fryn) and Dod SHAW (later PROCTER) lived whilst they attended the Forbes School. In 1907 Elizabeth organised a five-week holiday for a number of her pupils, where they stayed at Boleigh Farm in Lamorna - a memorable event.
Both Elizabeth and Stanhope were deeply engaged with the development and life of the new Passmore Edwards Art Gallery at Newlyn (NAG), from its establishment in 1895, and continued to exhibit there throughout their creative lives.
Her watercolour paintings produced both for exhibition and as a book for their only child, Alec, King Arthur's Wood, was published in large (elephantine) format in 1904. Her model for the figure of King Arthur in this mammoth fairy tale was her colleague and friend Thomas Cooper GOTCH. In 1908-9 she initiated the publication of an arts periodical, The Paper Chase, edited by her close friend F Tennyson JESSE. It was discontinued after the first two issues owing to her terminal illness. Elizabeth died of cancer on 16 March 1912, aged 51, in Newlyn, after three years of treatments and recuperative rest-cures in London and France.
In her obituaries, she was described as the 'Queen of Newlyn'. In 2005, in the portraiture exhibition Faces of Cornwall at Penlee House, the following were displayed: Half-Holiday (Alec home from school c1909, Penlee Collection); Newlyn Maid (NAG Collection); Cicely Jesse (Penlee Collection); A Zandvoort Fishergirl (1884, NAG Collection) and her well-known masterpiece, School is Out (1899). Although the latter in the Penlee Collection is a Newlyn School painting, and the subject thought to be from that area, it was painted at the time she was working at Percy CRAFT's Studio in St Ives. Hence the subject may be based on a St Ives school room.
Born in Dublin (18 November 1857), the son of a railway manager and a French mother (Juliette Forbes, neé de Guise) who was a driving influence in his life, his interest in art began on family holiday in Ardennes as a child. His father was transferred to London, and Stanny was sent to Dulwich College.
He later studied at Lambeth School of Art and RA Schools, where he staged his first exhibition in 1878. He spent two years studying in Paris from 1880, with his friend (from Dulwich) Henry LA THANGUE, and also in Brittany. Moving to Newlyn in 1884, he painted his famous Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach (Plymouth City Collection) and exhibited it at the RA the following spring. Also that year he exhibited two paintings at Manchester’s Royal Institution (Second Autumn Exhibition, 1884), virtually putting a seal upon his future: At Newlyn, Cornwall and A Cornish Fisher Boy.
In 1886 he was one of the founding members of the NEAC, and in Cornwall had quietly but effectively assumed the mantle of lead promoter of a self-styled colony, league or ‘school’ of artists. His sale of The Health of the Bride to Henry Tate (Tate Gallery Collection) enabled his marriage to the artist Elizabeth Adela ARMSTRONG in 1889. The birth of their son Alexander (called Alec), and the commissioning of their impressive arts & craft-styled home at Higher Faughan, in addition to their busy and productive output of paintings, is best read in their biographies.
Portraits of Stanhope, as drawn and painted by Elizabeth, are several and listed in Cook et al. A long-term portraiture project being carried out by the National Portrait Gallery will include their recent acquisition of A Portrait of Stanhope (reading, c1889). Ten years later, with the establishment of the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery in Newlyn (NAG, 1895) in between and all the efforts this required, the couple opened their Newlyn School of Painting in 1899, combining a new economic force - art and related tourism - within an area of declining mining, fishing and farming fortunes.
In 1910, the year of his election to the RA, a photo-plate of Snared (b&w) was included in the Studio-Talk section of The Studio to honour the RA-Elect. In 1915, following the death of Elizabeth in 1912, he married Maudie PALMER, a former pupil of the school and close friend of the family. In August 1916, his son Alec died in the front line (Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry) in France.
Work was the cure, and though critics comment that his later paintings are rather unoriginal, it is equally true that different styles and movements were having their day and his world was gone. In 1924 he designed a poster for the LMS Railway ‘project’. The ‘Round the Studios’ reporter (The Artist, 1932) commented that Forbes was ‘still enthusiastic about out-of-doors painting, to which he had religiously adhered since 1882 when he joined his friends Henry LA THANGUE and Arthur HACKER in France and found that painting en plein air was the only way “to depict nature as she is”.'
Stanhope Forbes, the 'Father of the Newlyn School', died in Newlyn on 2 March 1947, age 89 (GRO).
In the year 2000 'history was made' when Stanhope's superb painting The Seine Boat (1904) was sold at Phillips Fine Art, New Bond Street for £1,211,5000, taking the Newlyn School 'into hitherto uncharted waters' and establishing a world record for the artist.
Maude Claydon Palmer was born in Canada and torn between a career in art or music. While staying in Jersey she decided to study art, and initially went to London. An uncle then sent her to study at the FORBES SCHOOL in 1901, and there she was to become an assistant, helper and friend to the whole Forbes family. She was also a talented musician, and took part in the many musical parties of the art colony. In in the 1909 Spring Exhibition at NAG she was reviewed as exhibiting miniatures on ivory.
In 1912 she sold three (untitled) pictures at NAG in the 45th Exhibition, and in 1913 a painting, Blackberrying. She became the second wife of Stanhope Forbes following the death of Elizabeth Armstrong FORBES in 1912, and assisted him in the running of the Forbes School as Secretary from 1915. She continued to display her own paintings over the years, primarily at the Newlyn Art Gallery. In 1933 she was elected an honorary member of STISA. In 1937 the painting exhibited by Maude Stanhope Forbes was An Old Venetian Gateway at NAG, and in 1938 she sent the painting, Statuette, to the RA.
Exhibiting with STISA at Swindon in 1949, she showed a portrait of Stanhope, who had died in 1947.
In 1899 Stanhope FORBES and his wife Elizabeth FORBES formally opened their School of Painting and Drawing at Newlyn. The advertisement for it was headed 'NEWLYN -- A CLASS for DRAWING AND PAINTING from the LIFE', and it included in the brief statement of its intent, the following: 'In addition, a Studio adapted for the especial study of figures in the open air, and of animals in their natural environment of landscape will shortly be opened.'
Primary source information has been gathered by Iris Green in her 2002 study of the students of the Newlyn School of Painting (the formal name of the organisation), resulting in the publication of her monograph, Posing the Model. The list of pupils that Green compiled is not exhaustive, and without detailed attendance records (that do not remain in the Forbes family papers at the Tate Archive or in the WCAA) can never be so. Nevertheless, it is a seminal study from primary sources, and has been gleaned from Stanhope Forbes’s letters and diary entries, dictionaries, magazine articles concurrent with the school’s operational years 1899-c1941, and family letters that describe the experience of ‘being a pupil’. Some names have been added by our research team to Green’s original list. These names together with lists of known pupils at other local artist-led schools, are available in the Dictionary described below.
In the 1904 Studio, the tuition offered at the Forbes' School was described thus: ‘Newlyn, A Class for Drawing and Painting from the Life’ and the prospective student was advised to write for Full Particulars, to Stanhope A Forbes ARA, Trewarveneth, Newlyn, Penzance. A detailed description of the school, and how it was managed, is included in Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall 1880-1940, A Dictionary and Sourcebook (Hardie 2009) as written by Gladys Beattie Crozier in 1904 for The Girls’ Realm (illustrated).
The Canadian-born (Brockville, Ontario1859) painter studied at St John's Wood School, the RA School, Paris and Italy.
She is known to have worked from both St Ives (1890) and Newlyn (1897), and in between from Tuscany (1892). She attended the initial meeting to establish the St Ives Arts Club. Her titles include Piping, exhibited at Dowdeswells in 1890. By 1902 she lived at Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where she died age 79 on 31 October, 1938 (GRO).
A Truro-based painter, Joan is a former member of Taking Space, an exhibiting group of women artists.