Samuel John Lamorna Birch 1869-1955

Birch was the first of the second generation of painters to arrive in Cornwall, visiting Newlyn in 1889 and moving permanently a few years later. Rather than settling in Newlyn as most of the other artists had done, he chose to live a little way along the rugged coast at the head of the Lamorna valley. He had not lived long in Cornwall before Stanhope Forbes christened him ‘Lamorna’ so that he would not be confused with another resident artist with the same surname, Lionel Birch. In the beautiful tree-lined Lamorna valley with its meandering stream full of brown trout, Birch was able to combine his love of painting with his other past-time, fishing. In many of his paintings an angler is visible among the torrents of a stream which sweeps through the brightly-lit Cornish and Devonian landscapes.