A more complex trail of names is rather hard to imagine! Lilas was born as Henriette Davis, the daughter of writers Frank Davis (1846-1926, aka Frank Barrett) and his second wife, Rose Aburrow Davis (1868 - ?, aka Joan Barrett). It should also be said at the start that the name she was known by is alternatively Lilas, Lilias, or Leila. Both of her parents were writers, though her father Frank had previously produced ceramics and sculptures while living in France, and prior to that had been a sausage-maker in his father's butcher's business. (See Bear Alley).
It appears from correspondence that David Tovey established from the Whitehouse family archive that the family arrived in St Ives in the winter of 1912-1913, though it may have been a bit earlier. Leila is mentioned as exhibiting by St Ives Times first in December 1915, again in 1917, and then on Show days in 1920, and 1923.
Her first STISA Show Day was in 1929, when a study of children at play was considered full of fine movement, and her painting in the 1931 London exhibition, to which many St Ives artists contributed, "emphasised the dark mystery of a wild coast", and was considered one of the show's highlights.
In 1932 both of her STISA exhibits sold immediately. At that time she was living at Restronguet Farm, Mylor Bridge, and although she did not contribute to any of the touring shows during the 1930s, she remained a member of STISA until 1947.
Sarah Trewhella obtained a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Crafts from Falmouth University in 2008. In 2017 she completed the Defining Practice course at Newlyn School of Art. She is a regular exhibitor at STISA open shows.
Les Trewin graduated with a degree in Fine Art from Falmouth School of Art in 1985. Subsequently he trained as an art therapist, becoming a Director of Mental Health Services in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. After retiring from the NHS in 2019, the following year he settled in Penryn.
Born in Sydney, Barbara Tribe studied sculpture under Rayner Hoff at East Sydney Technical College, and in 1935, aged 22, she became the first woman and first sculptor to receive the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship, which she used to come to England. Here she continued her studies, starting first at the RA Schools, London. Soon after WWII, Barbara visited West Cornwall and fell in love with it, taking up a part-time post teaching at the Penzance School of Art, where her husband also taught ceramics. In 1947, after purchasing a former Baptist Sunday School in Sheffield near Penzance while on holiday, the couple married in London, and moved to West Cornwall permanently.
Barbara joined the NSA, with whom she exhibited annually, and made friends with many of its members, especially Bernard LEACH, Eric HILLER and Charles BREAKER, Sheila Cavell HICKS and others. Her husband died suddenly in 1961, and Barbara continued to live in 'The Studio' which they created and populated - not unlike a large, packed museum - with their work. In her varied career she held six major solo exhibitions from 1934 -1991, the final one entitled 'Alice to Penzance' at The Mall Galleries, London, where she showed 80 original works.
'The theme of organic growth attracts me - the cycle of life - anything that stirs and lives; the human figure, animals, birds, plants, insects. My work, traditional or semi-abstract, retains the human touch.' Working in all materials, from terracotta, bronze, stone, wood to metal and ceramics, she believed form to be most important, observing the contours and material when creating her works: 'I try to look at things as though seeing for the first time.' Barbara's curiosity led her to embark on a study of aboriginal art, and prompted her to travel extensively in later life. She always kept in close touch with her Australian roots, and after her retirement from the Penzance School of Art in 1988, she returned there on many occasions.
In 1998 she received the Jean Masson Davidson Medal from the Society of Portrait Sculptors in London - an international award 'for distinguished services and outstanding achievement in portrait sculpture'.
Her works sold at Bonhams in 2008 generated funds for the Barbara Tribe Foundation, set up under Tribe's will to further the development and appreciation of sculpture in Australia, to be administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
The jewellery made by Trickey was exhibited at the Seastar Gallery, now the Julia Mills Gallery at Mousehole. Her studio is located in South View Terrace nearby.
Trigg was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, and studied furniture design at High Wycombe College of Art. A teacher as well as an artist he has taught in a range of art-related crafts and Fine Art in several colleges and in H M Prison, Oxford.
He moved to Cornwall in the 1990s at the suggestion of a friend, Christine FEILER, and has remained, working and living in his studio home near the harbour in Penzance. Falmouth Art Gallery hosted a one man show of his work in 1997. He exhibits widely in Britain and Europe, and recently spent a year's residency working in Venice. His acute observation of shape and movement in his work and life, whether in sculpture, collage, construction or drawing, was manifest in his collection of drawings and writings brought together in 2003 to commemorate his mother, All that paraphernalia - Drawings and Writings about Mother.
Peter Trimby was accepted as a student at Sutton & Cheam Art School at the age of 14. He has worked as an artist ever since, exhibiting in London and Cornwall. In 1984 he moved to west Cornwall. He is inspired not only by Cornwall's landscape, but also by its mythology and folklore.
Born on 15 June 1861, London (GRO), the artist exhibited a painting with a Newlyn title at the RBA in 1891, though not at the new Gallery. From 1891-6 his address was Streatham, London. He died on 26 March, 1908, age 45 at Strang, near Douglas, on the Isle of Man.
Peter Trotman was born in Kensington, London but grew up in Falmouth. After attending a Foundation course in Art & Design at Falmouth School of Art in 1992, he obtained a BA in Fine Art from the University of Plymouth in 1996.
From his studio at Newmill, nr Penzance, Jack produced a wide range of beautiful objects in his favourite metals, gold and silver, including jewellery, paperweights, bookmarks, desk furnishings etc. These have been exhibited at craft fairs and trade shows nationally and internationally. Not only a gold and silversmith, he is a craftsman with a variety of artistic interests, some in 'bread and butter' lines, and others where the 'one off' piece of work is produced to commission.
Primarily a letter designer and cutter, he has created alphabets to illustrate books and monographs which in their turn are 'period pieces'. An example of this was the lettering devised for the titles of a book commissioned by Penzance Town Council for the Millennium gift to school children about the history of the town.* Equally talented in the cutting of letters into stone, slate and wood, he has produced studio signs, weathervanes and gravestones amongst other sculptural activity. A recent memorial stone for the former chairman of the Thomas Hardy Society of Great Britain, James Gibson, displays aside from name and dates, three lines from the Hardy's poem 'Great Things'. This can be seen in Boscastle, Cornwall in the graveyard of St Juliot.
*Penzance, The town and around (2000)
Callum Trudgeon joined the Leach Pottery in 2014 as the first recipient of the Seasalt Bursary. A former student of furniture making and design at Cornwall College, he held his first solo exhibition at the Pottery in the summer of 2017.
Listed in the Census of 1891 as an Artist Sculptor, born in Falmouth and living at Woodlane Terrace, with her brother and his family, composed of six children under the age of 9, a Swiss governess, plus various other servants.
Born at Dawlish of Devonian parentage, he trained at South London School of Art, then St Martin's School of Art. He first exhibited at the RA in 1912. In the same year, at the instigation of Lord Kitchener, he travelled to Egypt as chief inspector of the art and trade schools there. Whilst there, he was engaged by the Egyptian Secret Service to assist with the suppression of drug trafficking. Later he became Head of the Political Section of Cairo CID, becoming friendly with T E Lawrence. Subsequently he was transferred to the British General Staff and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
By 1925 he was based in St Ives and was actively involved in the formation of STISA in 1927. He worked with the Newlyn School under the direction of Ernest PROCTER. In 1926 at NAG he exhibited The Abandoned Clay-pit. At NAG (1927) he was reviewed as striking a modern note with his painting of gulls and in 1928 (NAG) he offered A Flutter of Wings, The Moonlight Bather and Back Street St Ives. A versatile painter working in a number of styles, he was highly praised by Julius OLSSON.
His favourite subjects were the harbour and old houses in St Ives and the china clay pits. His St Ives work was reproduced for posters and postcards, so they were affordable to all. A good example is The Quayside, St Ives, reprinted in colour in the Home Lovers Book.
In 1939 Truman exhibited a painting of Polperro at STISA. Mrs Polsue, who ran a picture gallery and tea room in Polperro, commissioned him to produce four postcards of the village.
It is thought that he moved away from St Ives to Plymouth after 1939, and then on to Bristol 1946, remaining active in art circles there.
A portrait of Jane Frances Truscott, the Artist's Mother (oil on canvas) hangs in the collection of the RCM, Truro.
With John MILLER, Michael Truscott set up a contemporary art gallery in Chapel Street (No 5) soon after the pair had moved to West Cornwall from Richmond, Surrey, in the 1950s. Also a painter, Michael has a designer's eye, and took up picture framing for many of the discerning artists of the area, as well as managing the studios for John and himself.
Michael was also a member of the NSA, and actively supported its activities, serving on the Committee (1972-3) before the re-organisation of the Gallery by John HALKES and his wife Ella in 1974.
His father, Charles Truscott, a photographer, and his mother Susanna were from Cornwall, but Walter was born while they were living in London for a short while. He trained at the Lambeth School of Art and was good friends with another Cornish artist, William Christian SYMONS.
While living and working as a photographer and painter in Falmouth, Walter Trustcott is assumed to have exhibited a portrait at the 48th annual exhibition of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society in 1880.
During the 1880s he became a war correspondent during the Sudan War for the Pictorial World.
Truscott remained single and died of smallpox while visiting Venice in 1890.
Born on 15 June 1846, London (GRO), the artist exhibited a painting with a Newlyn title at the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours in 1895. His working address from which he exhibited in the period from 1880-1906 (J&G), was at Haverstock Hill, London. Christopher Wood, following Graves, states an earlier set of exhibiting dates, being 1870-93 (RA works in 1883 and 84). This conflict is somewhat puzzling, but has not been researched at this time. Both ranges are within the artist's lifetime. Harry Tuck died in London, age 68, on 4 February 1915 (GRO).
Tess Tucker began to paint seriously in the 1990s, as an antidote to her job as an inner city probation officer in Germany. The subject of women formed the focus of her subject matter initially, and while this remains a major interest, her work now also encompasses abstract and figurative landscapes.
Nowadays she divides her time between Cornwall and the Languedoc in southern France. She is a member of Lizard Art Co-operative.
Trevor Tucker was born in Bexley, Kent. He took a diploma in Art and Design at Ravensbourne College of Art, Bromley, which led to a degree in commercial design. In 1987 he moved to Lostwithiel in Cornwall with a view to painting full-time. There he opened his own gallery and began to paint expressionist landscapes. Trevor's work has been exhibited at Veryan Galleries.
An American artist who exhibited a Newlyn title in 1892.
William Tudor was the Principal of the Penzance School of Art at the time of the School's Staff Group Exhibition of their various works at the Newlyn Art Gallery in the summer of 1982.
After leaving the Royal Navy, Tudor had become a lecturer at the High Wycombe College of Art & Design, and began to exhibit his work. Venues included the RA, the NEAC, the RSBA and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour. He was well-liked and respected during his period of tenure. A photo likeness of Bill is included in Hardie (1995, p199).
Richard Tuff is both an accomplished painter and printmaker. Having completed his studies at Winchester School of Art, Richard moved to Cornwall at the end of 1988 and began to concentrate on his paintings. He printed his first silkscreen with Coriander Studios in 1993 and transferred his gouache technique very successfully to the new medium. Since then his prints have gone from strength to strength with demand outstripping supply. His landscapes go beyond the traditional and demonstrate an interest in interlocking abstract areas in subtle tones. His compositions are coloured in harmonious hues that cleverly capture the effects of light.
Richard often paints Cornish harbours and towns, each time evoking the essence of the West Country and its coastline. In the past his influences came from further afield, in the harbours and bazaars of Morocco and the street scenes of Brazil, where the emphasis remained on colours and light. However, like so many artists before him, the lure of Cornwall is very strong. It continues to be his greatest source of inspiration and his home.