Hunt was reported in the St Ives Times as a RSW exhibitor at the Pall Mall Galleries in October 1920 with a Cornish subject. Born in Torquay, Devon, the barrister-turned-painter specialised principally in landscape watercolours, and he travelled and worked widely. He exhibited mainly at the Fine Art Society in London, where he showed some 369 paintings, but also at the Royal Watercolour Society where 220 paintings were shown.
One of the founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and arguably one of the most important painters of the 19th Century, Hunt visited Egypt and the Holy Land in 1854-55 and again from 1869-1872. Some of his paintings, such as The Light of the World, The Hireling Shepherd, The Awakening Conscience and The Triumph of the Innocents have become icons of the Victorian era. Hunt was awarded the Order of Merit in 1905.
His titles relevant to Cornwall include Helston, Cornwall (1860, watercolour on paper).
Born at Devonport, Plymouth (6 September 1807), Hunt's father was a naval officer who drowned while Robert was a youth. Robert began to study in London for the medical profession, but ill-health caused him to return to settle in Cornwall.
In 1829 he published The Mount's Bay; a descriptive poem ... and other pieces but received little critical or financial success. In 1840 he became Secretary to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society at Falmouth and was brought into contact with Robert Were Fox, with whom he made investigations into the early physics and chemistry of photography.
Hunt took up photography with great zeal following Daguerre's discovery, and developed the actinograph, introducing business processes. Such devices were developed and described by Hunt, in 1845, as an improvement on T B Jordan's 1839 Heliograph.
Hunt's Manual of Photography (1841, fifth edition 1857) was the first English treatise on the subject. Hunt also experimented generally on the action of light, and published Researches on Light in 1844. In 1845 he accepted the invitation of Sir Henry de la Beche to become Keeper of Mining Records at the Museum of Economic (afterwards Practical) Geology, and when the School of Mines was established in 1851 he lectured for two years on Mechanical Science, and afterwards for a short time on Experimental Physics.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1855. In 1858 he founded, with the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, The Miners Association. His principal work was the collection and editing of the Mineral Statistics of the United Kingdom, and this he continued to do till his retirement (1883), when the Mining Record Office was transferred to the Home Office. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1854, and in 1884 published a large volume on British Mining in which the subject was dealt with very fully, from an historical as well as a practical point of view. He also edited the fifth and some later editions of Ure's Dictionary of Arts, Mines and Manufactures. He died in London on 17 October 1887.
A Mineralogical Museum at Redruth Mining School was established in his memory. This closed in 1950, and the minerals were transferred to the School of Metalliferous Mining - now the Camborne School of Mines. He also collected and wrote Popular Romances of the West of England (1865), which included a record of myths and legends of old Cornwall, and proved so popular that it went through a number of editions.
Mentioned in Whybrow's 1883-1900 list of artists in and around St Ives.
Hunter was born on 30 May 1846 in Aberdeen, Scotland (GRO), and moved to London, where he exhibited both at Smith Street and the RA. 1897 found him in Cornwall, where he lived at Belle Vue, Newlyn, and from 1902 moved to The Malt House where he stayed until his death. Hunter assisted in teaching at the FORBES School of painting in the early days of the School.
Constance BIRCH wrote in her biography of Stanhope FORBES and Elizabeth FORBES: 'Among the older painters of the colony...Mr and Mrs Forbes feel that they owe a debt of gratitude to Mr G S Hunter, an artist of sincere and thoughtful individuality who is always ready to help and supplement the teacher's efforts. His own studio...is a perfect treasure-house of beautiful and interesting work.'
At the 1895 Opening of NAG, Hunter exhibited three paintings - two from the 'memorable East' (Cornishman review cutting): A Jericho Patriarch and A Modern Canaanite Jerusalem (which both sold), and the third being a Spanish subject. In 1901 at NAG he showed West Coast of Scotland and in 1907 he sold Spanish Girl. The artist died on 18 June, 1919, age 73, in Newlyn.
Born in Todwick, Yorkshire, Mary Ethel Hunter was the eldest child of Rev Henry Rudd Hunter and his wife Hannah. Her father had come from the Penrith area of the Lake District, and the familiarity with the region influenced her frequent choice of landscape subject, and her later purchase of a home there with her younger sister, Margaret. She did not marry.
In her late twenties she studied in Newlyn and Penzance, became a friend of Dod PROCTER, and exhibited at NAG. Later she studied in Paris. Upon return to England, she worked as an art mistress at St Albans (J&G). Her addresses were Dublin, Ripon and London. She exhibited primarily in London from her home in Ripon, Yorkshire, but infrequently elsewhere.
Wood (erroneously) in Victorian Painters continues to conflate her name and artistic career with that of Mary, Mrs John Young Hunter (who exhibited between 1900-14 and never studied in Cornwall). These two artists are separate and should not be confused.
Elizabeth Hunter first moved to Cornwall in the late 1950s and was elected to both the Penwith and Newlyn Societies of Art, with whom she exhibited widely, and throughout the West Country. From 1964-66 she inhabited the residential flat at NAG when she assisted her then partner as one of the temporary curators of the Gallery prior to Alister Mac McLeod. For many years thereafter she returned to live in Bristol (1984-2001) where she was a lecturer in Life Drawing and Painting at the Bristol School of Art & Design. She decided to move back to Cornwall in 2003, and lives in Penzance.
Born in Bristol, she studied at the West of England Academy under Paul FEILER, Robert Hurdle and George Sweet. She continued her studies at the Slade, where she was the winner of the major drawing prize and was taught by William Coldstream and Lucian Freud. She also studied at University College London.
Her striking watercolours are large in scale, and incorporate evocative, magical landscapes, part filled with double portraits, saints, myths and lovers. Her work has been shown over a three year period at exhibitions at Trereife House, and this proves a perfect venue for unusual and haunting work. Other local venues included Badcock's Gallery and Rainyday Gallery (prior to their recent closure) and most recently Cornwall Contemporary, Penzance.
Robin Hunter is a painter and printmaker. In May 2016 an exhibition of her work was held at 'The Art of Wine' in Truro.
The artist lives in West Cornwall currently (2013).
Described in the St Ives Times as not only an engraver, but a printer as well. She exhibited in St Ives at the 1912 Show Day, and Whybrow notes that she worked from Market Strand, at the Harbour.
John Hurst is a landscape painter living in west Cornwall. He has exhibited at the Veryan Galleries, on the Roseland peninsula.
Kimmy Hussey is a St Ives based painter whose work is inspired by the subtropical plant life of Cornwall.
In 1909 Hutton arrived in St Ives, accompanied by his three sisters. Born in India of Scottish parents, he had contracted tuberculosis in Burma, and the hope was that the Cornish climate would improve his health. They arrived to live at 5 Porthminster Terrace, St Ives, and he survived for a further ten years.
In early 1914 he showed and sold Twilight on the Piers to Lord Courtney of Penwith in the NAG Winter Exhibition. At the St Ives Show Day of that same year he exhibited Moonrise at Hayle Bar, Atlantic Wave and Hampton Court. Largely self-taught, he was described as having a special gift for landscape work; he exhibited in London and municipal galleries from 1912-17. Tovey entitles his section about Hutton in his latest historical review Sea Change: "A universal favourite."
Hutton is buried in Barnoon Cemetery, St Ives.
Mentioned in Whybrow's 1911-20 list of artists in and around St Ives.
Catherine Hyde was born in Kent and was a student of Fine Art Painting at London's Central School of Art, before moving to Cornwall in 2001 and settling in Helston. Her images of the landscape incorporate animals such as the hare, stag, owl and fish to convey the interconnectedness of the elements and seasons.
Born at Indore, India, she studied initially at the London School of Art.
On the death of her mother in 1911, Gladys moved with her family to Penmorvah, Alexandra Road, in Penzance, and enrolled at the Forbes School. Very little of her work from this period has survived.
In 1914 she returned to London, working during World War I for Roger Fry's Omega workshops and enjoying a bohemian lifestyle. In 1919 she set up her studio permanently in Hampstead.
Her superb painting, entitled 'Morning', appeared for auction in Paris in 2019, having been part of the collection of impressionist and modern art at the Petit Palais in Geneva. This unusual artwork, whose background clearly depicts Lamorna Cove, takes as its subject a group portrait of idealised female bathers emerging from a swim. It attracted a great deal of critical acclaim.
Buckman comments that among her most notable works were the illustrations she created for Ezra Pound's Cantos (published by J Rodker).
The Hypatia Trust is a registered educational trust dedicated to research, documentation and publication in a wide range of the liberal and fine arts, with special reference to the history of gender and creative expression. The Trust maintains a focus on book collections and the book arts - conservation, preservation, bookbinding, bookplate and bookmark sub-collections - and contributes to festivals, celebrations and book projects, whilst also providing publicly accessible spaces for reading and writing groups and students.
This Cornish Art Index is supported and maintained under the auspices of the Project Group: ARTS, of the Hypatia Trust, with the financial support of friends and sponsors. Linking to this group are representatives from the groups whose logos appear to the left of the Artist's Form.
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RCPS exhibitor, who won a Silver medal for Photography in September 1887.
Born in Lancashire, Ibbotson studied Fine Art at Reading University and the Royal Academy Schools.
According to the exhibition catalogue for 20 Years of Contemporary Art at the Falmouth Art Gallery, up to 2000 she is recorded as having painted 35 paintings in her artistic career, and very rarely exhibits them. Cross (2002) has written a closely considered piece with the help of Diane in interview about her work and her philosophy.
Ichino was born in Tachikui, Japan and studied at Kansai University. Janet LEACH had stayed with his family and worked with him when she studied in Japan from 1954 to 1955. She invited and encouraged him, with his family, to come and work at the LEACH POTTERY which he did between 1969-1973. This was of great benefit, due to his status as a fully trained traditional Japanese potter. While in Europe he also directed the construction of a kiln for the Atelier de Cep in Villenauxe, France.
He returned to London (1981) for a joint exhibition with Janet Leach at the Amalgam Art Gallery.
Clary Illian was an apprentice potter at the LEACH POTTERY from 1964-65, having studied previously at the University of Iowa in the state in which she was born. In her writings, A Potter's Workbook, she credits Bernard Leach as the creator of the modern studio pottery movement, now well-acknowledged universally.
She worked in stoneware and porcelain, and produced a large range of high-quality domestic ware. Her own first studio was set up in the mid-1960s in Benton County, Iowa, and she later lived and worked in Ely, Iowa. Her avocation was always to teach at workshops throughout the USA and Canada. Her on-line presence is good, in that her book is still much in use (she is called 'a national treasure in the USA) and there are helpful videos available on You Tube sharing her philosophy and techniques.
Michele Illing is a painter based in Bude. Having started her career as a freelance illustrator, she then taught art for many years, and currently specialises in portraits. She offers workshops, demonstrations and critiques for art groups, as well as private one-to-one lessons.
Bryan Illsley was born in 1937, and studied at Kingston School of Art. In 1963, he moved to St Ives and worked at the Bernard Leach Pottery, and in 1967 established a partnership with Breon O'Casey, making studio jewellery. He now lives in London.
Red Square (1967), a painting by this artist, is in the Cornwall Council permanent collection.
Caroline Illsley Barnett was born in London. She was a student at Kingston School of Fine Art where, in 1957, she met her first husband, Leslie ILLSLEY. After moving to St Ives they acquired St Ives Pottery in 1962. Until the birth of their daughter, Saskia, she worked alongside Leslie designing and producing pots for Troika Pottery. She is now married to Anthony Barnett and continues her career as a potter, sculptor and painter in St Ives.