Stanhope Alexander Forbes, R.A. 1857-1947

London, Sotheby's, 6 March 1992, lot 2;
Private collection

Penzance, Newlyn Orion Gallery, Plymouth City Art Gallery and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Artists of the Newlyn School, May - June 1979, no. 2;
London, Barbican Art Gallery, Painting in Newlyn  1880-1930, July - September 1985, no. 1

Caroline Fox and Francis Greenacre, Artist's of the Newlyn School 1880-1900, exhibition catalogue for the Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1979, p. 75, repr. pl. 26

STRUCTURE The canvas is in good original condition, unlined. CATALOGUE COMPARISON The catalogue illustration is broadly representative. PAINT SURFACE The paint surface is in good, clean condition with a light even varnish. There are traces of craquelure in the sky, upper left; stable. ULTRAVIOLET UV light reveals a very few flecks of infilling to the aforementioned craquelure, upper left. FRAME Held in a plaster gilt frame in fair condition.
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Forbes discovered Newlyn by chance in January 1884 when he was touring Cornwall seeking a place to settle. Although Forbes is now the artist most associated with Newlyn, perhaps due to his later involvement with the Newlyn School of Art, he was not the first artist to move there. By 1884 the Newlyn colony numbered around a dozen artists, including Walter Langley, Thomas Cooper Gotch, Edwin Harris, Henry Scott Tuke, Norman Taylor and Frank Bramley. Writing to his mother from the Union Hotel in Penzance on his first visit to the area, Forbes discussed his options; '... unless I prefer a place called Newlyn within a mile of this town and which I have just run over to see, I shall probably put up at Porthleven. I sleep here tonight, go over first thing tomorrow morning to Newlyn, judge it, return then to Falmouth and back again to whichever place I decide upon finally.' (Caroline Fox, Stanhope Forbes and the Newlyn School, 1993, pp. 17-18) At Newlyn Forbes found a traditional fishing community little changed by the modern world and a wealth of picturesque subjects of working class life that he had delighted in painting in Brittany in the preceding years. 'So here at last we have the artist in the place that he loved, surrounded by friends, a lifetime of work and success before him, little thinking that the cluster of grey-roofed houses, which he had seen before him that spring morning in 1884 when he walked along the dusty road by which Newlyn is approached from Penzance, would be his permanent home.' (C. Lewis Hind, The Art of Stanhope Forbes, R.A., 1911, p. 20) 

The present picture is among the first pictures painted by Forbes in Newlyn and predates the famous Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach by a year. The painting depicts a typical Newlyn street scene with the whitewashed fishermen's houses and steps leading to the lofts where the herring catch was smoked. The pebbled street is a hive of activity as the fishermen's wives and daughters gossip on their doorsteps or begin their morning work. The composition is convincing and it is likely that the picture was painted on the spot from Forbes' observations of the people as they went about their daily routines. Eventually the fisherfolk came to accept the novelty of the painter standing at his easel working at a painting in their back-streets and on the quay. Forbes wrote of this ability to paint a natural subject as it presented itself before him, thus; 'Here every corner is a picture, and, more importantly from the point of view of a figure-painter, the people seemed to fall into their places, and to harmonise with their surroundings... [they] are obliged to don their sou'-westers and duck frocks, and all the rest of the picturesque attire which one is always struck with in strolling through a fishing village... All these things delighted me from the first, for here seemed to be a spot where the figures did not clash with the sentiment of the place, making one sigh for the good old days of picturesque costume, but actually seemed appropriate and just. For not only the dress, but its wearers were alike weather-stained, and tanned into harmony by the sun and salt wind, so that the whole scene was in keeping and of one piece. Nature has not lavished all of her care on the landscape here about, but has built up a race of people well knit and comely, fit inhabitants of such a region. Models, that prime necessity of the figure-painter, were to be found here, as good as one could desire; and I think I can claim to have been one of the foremost in accustoming the good folk of the district to somewhat eccentric conduct which the out-outdoor painter in his zeal affects. ' (Mrs Lionel Birch, Stanhope A. Forbes, A.R.A., and Mrs Elizabeth Stanhope Forbes, A.R.W.S., 1906, p. 28) 

In an undated letter to his mother, probably written in February 1884, Forbes stated that 'I have a little street scene in progress, houses, steps, etc., a whole host of sketches of boats, boys, sea and other fishy things. I am more pleased with the place artistically each day, and have no idea of going elsewhere this year.' (Caroline Fox and Francis Greenacre, Artist's of the Newlyn School 1880-1900, exhibition catalogue for the Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1979, p. 75, pl. 26)