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Born in Islington, London, the son of a Swedish father and English mother, the 'artist was within him' and he was wholly self-taught. Listed by Marriott as a daring yachtsman and St Ives artist, responsible for the concoction of Swedish punch, a mystic ceremony, for the New Year celebrations at the Arts Club where they met every Saturday night. He did more than any other painter to stamp St Ives as a British outpost of impressionism. He ran the Cornish School of Landscape, Figure and Sea Painting in St Ives, first with Louis GRIER and subsequently with Algernon Mayow TALMAGE.

In 1887 at the Nineteenth Century Art Society, which kept a small gallery at Dudley, West Yorkshire, 'Mr J Olsson shows a distinct poetic feeling in his treatment of March Twilight: Newlyn, Cornwall.' [AJ, 1887, p413]. This would seem to indicate that he had been in Cornwall earlier than was previously thought (at the age of 22-23 rather than 26 as previously listed for his arrival in Cornwall).

He and his wife, Kathleen (also an artist) designed and built their own home, St Eia, which contained many Arts & Crafts features (later an hotel). Students included Reginald Guy KORTRIGHT Emily CARR, Mary McCROSSAN and John Anthony PARK amongst many others. His influence as a teacher spread over a generation or more of young painters from Britain and overseas. He resided at St Ives for two decades until 1912, when he returned to London and shortly thereafter was elected an Associate of the RA. Olsson cruised with his yacht most summers.

The Studio commented: 'He knows the way from the Scillies to the Isle of Wight as most men know their way to the nearest railway station.' His work was in the late impressionist style of Henry MOORE. At the 1895 NAG Opening, Olsson exhibited two paintings, the largest Astray (a flock of sheep wandering over yellow towans), and the second, a seascape. His first sale of a painting at Newlyn was in 1897 and he exhibited regularly thereafter, selling Moonrise (1902), Off the Needles (1904) Summer Calm (1910). Other titles included Dunluce Castle, Gale Subsiding, A Moonlit Shore (1911, oils). Tovey describes well how immensely Olsson contributed to many aspects of creative and social life in St Ives, and how he remained supportive and connected to the art colony for the rest of his life. His old studio, the vast Number 5, Porthmeor Studios became STISA's first dedicated gallery space.

Olsson died of cardiac failure at St Heliers, Dalkey, Co Dublin in Ireland while on a visit to his sister-in-law's home.
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Born in Huddersfield, the artist studied at Royal College of Art and Julian's Academy in Paris. His address in 1917 is given as Gt Eccleston near Garstang.

He was living at Meadow House, St Ives when he exhibited Boats at Anchor, St Ives at the RA in 1924. Originally he had been an architect, and was proficient on the violin and viola. In the late 1920s he moved to Lancashire to become Headmaster of Morecambe School of Art. By 1938 he was living in Blackpool.
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Born in London, Maidment was a student of the Royal College of Art in early years. With talents in draughtsmanship, he won a travelling scholarship.

Living first in Newlyn from before WWI, he worked and remained there until 1932 when he moved to St Ives, joining the St Ives Society of Artists (1932-59). In 1944 he moved to Helston and later to Torquay, in 1952; but he kept his working and exhibiting ties in St Ives.

Maidment is especially noted for his detailed paintings of the many quaint houses and byways of St Ives. He was included in the exhibition to celebrate the Centenary of Cornwall County Council: A Century of Art in Cornwall 1889-1989.
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Born in Castleford, Yorkshire, the son of a Wesleyan minister, he trained with a firm of architects at Leeds before setting up on his own. He was a successful architect before he retired to take up painting, unsurprisingly he was particularly attracted by interesting buildings and old bridges, the design of Wesleyan chapels being one of his specialities. In 1935, after retirement and determined to learn to paint, he and his wife Hilda travelled through several Mediterranean countries.

In 1939 they settled in Carbis Bay, Pennington studying at Leonard John FULLER's St Ives School of Painting. He put on exhibitions in St Ives in the following years, featuring Sicily and the fruits of a five month sketching tour of Southern Spain and Morocco. His oils, particularly of St Ives street scenes, show the influence of John Anthony PARK. Before the Second World War, he was a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and a candidate for their hanging committee afterwards. On the death of his wife in 1957 he moved to Chichester, joining local societies but still exhibiting with STISA until 1959.
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A M Foweraker was born in 1873, the son of an Exeter clergyman and headmaster of Exeter Cathedral School where A M was educated. He graduated in Science from Christ's College, Cambridge and did not take up painting until his early twenties. He studied art in Exeter, and first exhibited with RCPS in 1897, the same year in which he married Annie Triphina Coles.

The couple moved to Lelant near St Ives in 1902, and had one daughter, Marie. Foweraker is best known for his moonlit watercolour scenes, often featuring a figure carrying a lamp and his use of the colour, blue. In 1903 he assisted Algernon TALMAGE with his Cornish School of Landscape and Sea painting, being primarily responsible for watercolour tuition. In 1905 he advertised winter art classes in Andalucia, and his address was given as Villa Camara, Malaga. He held classes in Malaga in January and February, Cordoba in March, and Granada in April, and appears to have made regular trips to Spain and later to France.

Charles MARRIOTT was asked to write a travel book on Spain in 1908, and he asked Foweraker to illustrate it. His only work exhibited at the RA was unintended: having been too late for inclusion in that year's RBA show, the President forwarded it to the RA, where it was accepted and hung. In the mid-1920s he moved to Swanage in Dorset, where he died in January 1942 and is buried at the Godlingston Cemetery, Ulwell.
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Born in Adelaide, Australia, his family then moved to New Zealand. He studied art at Wanganui Technical College, working there as a pupil teacher under the painter D E Hutton (1899-1904). In 1904 he travelled through Europe painting topographical and waterside subjects in oils and watercolour, studying both in London and at Julian's Academy in Paris, before returning to New Zealand in about 1909.

In St Ives he worked from Porthmeor Square studio. In 1913 he was to show Ebbing Tide and two others, one Cornish scene and one Dutch, at St Ives, and continued to exhibit locally throughout 1914. He was one of the four St Ives artists to lose their lives in WWI, dying aged 41 in Cardiff during service with the Home Guard. He is commemorated by Edmund George FULLER on the St Ives Arts Club Memorial, working to a design by painter friend Borlase SMART.
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The artist, a member of the distinguished Pitt family which had produced two former prime ministers, arrived in St Ives with a manservant to care for him as he was crippled and confined to a wheel chair. One sister lived in Norway Square nearby, whilst two other sisters remained in the family home in Clifton, Bristol.

Pitt worked from the White Studio, a wooden chalet on the cliffs at Porthmeor Beach, which was open to the public, painting views of The Island and Clodgy Point. He opened his studio for the 1911 and 1913 Show Days at St Ives. Returning from Clifton, after an illness, in 1920, he found that his studio had been broken into, and eventually it was destroyed in a storm. He lies buried in Barnoon Cemetery.
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Born in Glasgow, he studied initially at the Glasgow School of Art under Newbery. At the age of 18 he went to the Slade for five years under Brown, Tonks and Wilson Steer, winning a scholarship and prizes for head and figure painting. For many years he assisted Gerald Moira in mural decoration work in a number of important buildings, such as Lloyds and the Central Criminal Courts, and was in charge of women artists who decorated the first Wembley Exhibition restaurants. In 1894 his address was in London, and in 1911 at Weston Turville nr Aylesbury.

In 1922 he was appointed Principal of the Reigate and Redhill School of Arts and Crafts, a position he retained for 18 years. However, he paid regular visits to Cornwall as the titles of his 1930s exhibition pieces show, and he acted as Temporary Headmaster at the Penzance School of Art in 1941 upon the sudden death of James W LIAS; he was then superseded within the year by the appointment of Edward Bouverie HOYTON to the post.

He settled in St Ives during WWII, living at Lyonesse, Talland Road at the time of his 1944 RA exhibition, but moved with his wife, an accomplished weaver, and elderly sister Marjorie Brown to nearby Carbis Bay in 1946. Mrs Todd Brown was partly responsible for the creation of the Cornwall League of Spinners, Dyers and Weavers. He moved to Torquay in 1950, and died there the following year.
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The artist, a member of the distinguished Pitt family which had produced two former prime ministers, arrived in St Ives with a manservant to care for him as he was crippled and confined to a wheel chair. One sister lived in Norway Square nearby, whilst two other sisters remained in the family home in Clifton, Bristol.

Pitt worked from the White Studio, a wooden chalet on the cliffs at Porthmeor Beach, which was open to the public, painting views of The Island and Clodgy Point. He opened his studio for the 1911 and 1913 Show Days at St Ives. Returning from Clifton, after an illness, in 1920, he found that his studio had been broken into, and eventually it was destroyed in a storm. He lies buried in Barnoon Cemetery.
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The son of Nathaniel S Turland of Northampton, George had adopted the name Turland Goosey by the time he arrived in St Ives, although he reverted to the name George Turland in the late 1920s. Trained as an architect, he had gone to America and made a name for himself designing some of the early skyscrapers and no less than seven Roman Catholic churches.

Having already had success showing his etchings, his purpose in moving to St Ives in 1921 was to try his hand at painting. Although rarely practicing as an architect whilst in the town, his highly regarded design for the cross on the War Memorial was an exception.

In the 1924 Show Day at St Ives, his principal picture was of Venice with old Adriatic boats anchored against the wall of a Doge's palace. Another was a view of the Rialto Curio shop at the foot of the Rialto bridge, and a smaller depiction of the Grand Canal. An array of other works included oils of The Island, Clodgy; Godrevy and the Bay from Knill Moor. George played an active role in the theatricals at the St Ives Arts Club, and was invited to join STISA in 1928. He returned to America as war loomed in the late 1930s and settled at Laguna Beach, California, where he developed an impressionistic style of depicting boats in the harbour, winning many admirers.
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Born at Kingsbridge, Devon, his studies were with F J Snell (1896), then at Plymouth College of Art (1897), Royal College of Art (1899) and under Julius OLSSON in St Ives (1913). The artist returned to St Ives after serving in the army in WWI and his drawings of the Western Front were purchased by the Imperial War Museum. He married Irene Godson in 1917, settled in St Ives (1919), and worked from The Cabin, 1 Porthmeor Studios and the Ocean Wave Studio (1929). In 1935 he was one of the St Ives group commissioned to do a poster, based on an aerial view, of St Ives for tourism purposes. He also designed another for the Southern Railway, and many others.

Though now he is mainly regarded as a coastal artist, his industrial and architectural drawings after WWI are among his most accomplished work (Wormleighton). The couple moved to Salcombe, Devon, in 1926, but returned to St Ives the following year. In 1929 he published a book on the technique of painting seascapes. In 1934-36, Peter LANYON was his pupil.

Works displayed at Newlyn included two studies of St Ives, The Steel Works, Lincoln; The Nitrate Works, Plymouth; The Old 'Implacable' in Dry Dock (1929) and Land's End (1937). During WWII he designed propaganda posters for the Royal Navy.

In the RCM, Truro are two of his coastal landscapes, Morning Light, St Ives (1922), and Cornish Cliffs, Zennor (1923).

Borlase Smart was instrumental in his final year of life in securing a permanent home for the St Ives Society of Arts in the Mariner's Church, St Ives. In 1949, a group of St Ives' artists banded together to become members of the Penwith Society, as a tribute to him. These included Herbert Read, Barbara HEPWORTH, Peter LANYON, Shearer ARMSTRONG, G R DOWNING, Bernard LEACH, Denis MITCHELL, Ben NICHOLSON, Misome PEILE, and Philip KEALEY. In that final year, his portrait was painted by the sculptor Allan G WYON.

In West Cornwall today, as administered by the Tate Galleries, are the artists' studios in both St Ives and Newlyn, carrying the joint name of the Borlase Smart-John WELLS Trust. These have been renovated to a high standard, and are made available to artists upon application.
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Born in York, the son of James Ashton, drawing master, Ashton grew up in Australia then settled in St Ives in 1902 (Address c/o Jas Garnham) to study under Julius OLSSON and Algernon Mayow TALMAGE.

Active and well-liked in his new home in St Ives, Will (as he was known) was a cricket organiser along with Richard Hayley LEVER in their matches with the artists of Newlyn. He continued his studies at Juliens' Atelier in Paris under Professors Baschet and Schommer.

Ashton established a name as a painter of impressionist seascapes. Having worked around the Cornish coast, he returned to Australia in 1905. In 1913, he was elected ROI, and continued to exhibit in Britain using Olsson's London studio and the Connaught Club as his exhibiting addresses. In 1926 he lived and worked in Egypt.

Appointed Director of the National Art Gallery of New South Wales 1937, and knighted in 1960.
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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, the same year as he was encouraged by Lord Kitchener to undertake the revival and reorganisation of Egyptian Arts and Crafts, being appointed Chief inspector of the Art and Trade Schools.

'During this period he was greatly influenced by the simplicity and symbolism of Ancient Egyptian Art, hence after 14 years he returned to the West Country and 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. He settled to live at St Ives and worked from Trezion chiefly in the1920s and 30s his art first mentioned in St Ives press in 1925. 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. He was a key figure in the formation of STISA, alongside George F BRADSHAW. Possibly moved away from St Ives to Plymouth after 1939, and then on to Bristol 1946, remaining active in art circles there.
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Fred Bottomley was educated at Truro High School, although Southport, Lancashire appears to be his home territory. From school he followed his father into the cotton business, but during WWI left to join the Forces, spending three years in France. After the Armistice he decided to devote his life to art, and studied at the Slade from 1923-25, having married and settled in Kent.

After eighteen months exploring England, he and his wife arrived in St Ives in 1929, living at Salubrious House, Fore Street. Fred worked from Porthmeor and Dragon Studios, Norway Square. During WWII he seems to have moved back to Southport for a couple of years. Paintings of the harbour, lifeboat slip-way and Downalong in St Ives, were among 10 pictures exhibited at the RA between 1931 and 1944. He returned permanently to Southport in 1952.
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Bradshaw was born in Ulster and served in Submarines as a Lt Commander during WWI and awarded a DSO. He settled in St Ives c1921, when he studied under Charles Walter SIMPSON, and met his wife Kathleen Marion SLATTER whom he married in 1922.

The artist worked pre-war from Carrack Dhu and Ship Studio, Norway Lane, St Ives, and was appointed by the Simpsons as an assistant in the Simpson School of Painting. After WWII he returned to St Ives and remained active and dedicated to the welfare of the Artists' Society - though times had changed art so radically that he was virtually a forgotten and obliterated artist; he became financially straitened as modernist artists began their days of glory.

He died, after an operation, at the Royal Cornwall Infirmary at Truro.
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Born in East Moseley, Surrey, the artist's family moved to America. She studied first at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, and the Philadelphia School of Design, and then returned to Europe to attend Colarossi's Atelier in Paris, taught by Eugene Delecluse.

She first came to St Ives in 1914, her initial success at RA in 1916 being St Ives Harbour. Concentrated on landscapes and townscapes in early years, and painted from 3 Porthmeor Studios by 1920. Moved to London 1921 to live with Dorothea SHARP in Maida Vale, but maintained her St Ives studio. She was invited to contribute a painting to Queen Mary's Doll House (1922).

In 1930s, she concentrated on flower paintings in oil, and increased the size of her canvases. One of these, Peonies, is illustrated in the Falmouth Exhibition Catalogue (1996) and three other titles exhibited were Magnolia Grandiflora, Anemones, and An Arrangement of Herbaceous Cut Flowers, all from private collections.

She lived in St Ives with Dorothea SHARP during WWII, and acted as a curator for Lanham's Gallery, organising exhibitions and running the shows. After the split of STISA, she returned to London, but continued to go back and forth between the two. She died in 1963 in St Ives at 1 Piazza Studios.
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Born and educated at Dulwich College, Fuller studied at the RA Schools between 1912-14, winning the British Institute Scholarship in painting (1913), and went on to attend the Clapham School of Art. Whilst serving in the Machine Gun Corps during WWI, he became friendly with Borlase SMART, and after the war attended the RA again (1919-21), and also got married to the artist Marjorie MOSTYN (called Nancy), daughter of the artist Tom Mostyn.

From 1922-32 he taught art at St John's Wood Art Schools, exhibited at the Paris Salons (Silver medallist), and also taught at his old school, Dulwich College (1927-37). Borlase SMART persuaded him to come to St Ives, and with his wife he established the St Ives School of Painting (1938ff). He was also a Founder member of the Penwith Society of Artists. A charming portrait of Terry FROST and Son (oil on canvas) is part of the permanent collection of the Newlyn Art Gallery.

A complete resume of his important contributions to the St Ives art colony and to the crucial role he played during and after World War II is best found in Tovey (2003) pp94-6. Fuller died in St Ives.
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The family name of the artist Garstin Cox, was at the time of his birth Cock, but by the time of the birth of his younger sister four years later in the 1890s, she was also identified as Cox. It appears that Garstin was also named for his father, i.e. William (Census 1901), but his death notice is in the name of 'Garstin Norman Cox' honouring his great admiration for the work of Phil Whiting.

The son of the amateur artist William COCK, Garstin Cox began his studies at Camborne Art School, then briefly studied with Stanhope FORBES and in St Ives with John Noble BARLOW. It was while he was touring with Barlow in 1910, that his father, was able to secure a studio in St Ives on St Andrews Street, for them both to employ on painting trips to the town from their home in Camborne. They called it the Beach Studio, and added to it the following year by taking a lease on the 'Ocean Wave Studio' next door at No. 6.

His first painting at the RA was The Coming of Spring in 1912 (at the early age of 19), and he also exhibited at the Royal West of England Academy and Guildhall, London. Later he worked from the Atlantic Studio, the Lizard (1930). Golden Autumn (1914), an oil on canvas, is part of the fine art collection of the RCM, Truro.

When he married Dorothy Charlotte Caroline Pike in 1920 his name was recorded as William Norman Garstin Cox and the couple had a son, Garstin T Cox, born in 1921.

He died of bronchial pnuemonia and influenza on 28 February, in the 1933 influenza epidemic during which he had been helping to nurse his ailing father. His father survived him, dying in 1939.
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One of the three daughters of artist Tom MOSTYN, Nancy was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, possibly at the time her father was studying under Hubert Herkomer. She studied at St John's Wood School of Art and Royal Academy Schools from 1912 to 1915 where she won silver and bronze medals. Her teachers included John Singer SARGENT, George CLAUSEN and Sir William ORPEN. In 1915 she won the British Institute Scholarship in painting. This award was won two years previously by Leonard John FULLER, whom she later married.

After her marriage and the birth of her son she found less time for painting, restricting herself to some commercial work. In 1938 she and her husband moved to St Ives and she helped him run the ST IVES SCHOOL of PAINTING. Her sister, Dorothy MOSTYN was also an artist, and exhibited at the RA in 1920 with the painting, Spring, as reported in the St Ives Times (14 May 1920). At the end of the War she also served a while as STISA's Gallery Curator. By 1948 she was showing predominantly child portraits and still lifes. On her husband's death in 1973 she took over the running of the School of Painting, helped in her last years by Roy RAY, playing an important role in ensuring the survival of the School. She died in St Ives.
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Born at Denham, Buckinghamshire, the son of painters William NICHOLSON and Mabel PRYDE. Nicholson met Paul Nash at the Slade (1910-11) but, was otherwise without formal training. He travelled in France, Italy, Spain and California between 1911 and 1918, but became serious about painting only after 1920 when he married artist Winifred Roberts, and shortly thereafter began abstract paintings influenced by Synthetic Cubism. His association with Barbara HEPWORTH and Henry MOORE dates from 1931 when he was living in London.

With Hepworth he visited in France and met Arp, Brancusi, Braque and Picasso. Later he was encouraged to join Abstraction-Creation and met Piet Mondrian. He exhibited with the Seven and Five Society.Nicholson married Barbara HEPWORTH in 1934, and was co-editor of Circle, the constructivist art magazine in 1937.

The couple moved to Carbis Bay, Cornwall, at the outbreak of War in 1939. In Cornwall he returned to painting landscapes, but added colour to his abstract reliefs previously devised in his constructivist period. Persuaded to join STISA by Borlase SMART in 1944, Nicholson tried to influence the direction of STISA after Smart's death, and was instrumental behind-the-scenes in the split of STISA, being a founder Member of the Penwith Society of Arts. Though not universally liked, he was a great influence on many young artists in St Ives, including Wilhelmina BARNS-GRAHAM, George Peter LANYON and Sven BERLIN. His marriage to Barbara HEPWORTH was dissolved in 1951 and he left St Ives in 1958.
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Robert Douglas Burt was an early 20th century artist influenced by the British impressionist painters of the Cornish Newlyn School. Originally from Scotland he painted in St Ives circa 1920/30 specialising in harbour scenes and sea pieces.
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Isobel Heath was born in Yorkshire, and studied under William Ritson, Robert Blatchford and at Colarossi's in Paris before going to Leonard FULLER's St Ives School of Painting in the late 1930s. She first exhibited on Show Day in St Ives in 1940.

She was married for a time to Dr Marc Prati, the political correspondent to La Stampa of Turin, whom she met when he was a prisoner of war. By him she had a son. Isobel painted in watercolours and produced some large figure paintings in oils; she also made a number of pencil portraits.

During WWII she worked for the Ministry of Information, drawing and painting factory workers in the munitions and camouflage factories. It was also at this time that she completed a number of pencil portraits of American troops and local characters. According to Tovey, these wartime works are some of her best.

In Cornwall, Isobel lived at Bosun's Nest, Carthew, near Clodgy, St Ives. Resigning from STISA in 1949, she became a Founder member of the breakaway group, The Penwith Society of Artists. Isobel did not remain for long, resigning in 1950 due to the A,B,C group system which she declined to join - alongside Peter LANYON, Sven BERLIN and others. She rejoined STISA in 1957, exhibiting with them for the rest of her life.

Her studio was in Custom House Lane, St Ives but she often spent days out on the moors painting, staying overnight in her van. She published three books: Passing Thoughts (1971), Love (1973) and Reflections (1978). She died in St Ives.
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The meticulously drawn figurative paintings of Maurice Sumray, in which crowds of bald or scantily clad women dance or play piggyback in mysterious carnival-like arrangements, seemed out of place in the predominantly abstract or landscape-inspired art colony of St Ives, Cornwall, where Sumray moved permanently after leaving his native London in 1968.

Maurice Sumray, painter and engraver: born London 26 December 1920; married 1952 Pat Twinn (two sons, two daughters); died Carbis Bay, Cornwall 21 July 2004.

The meticulously drawn figurative paintings of Maurice Sumray, in which crowds of bald or scantily clad women dance or play piggyback in mysterious carnival-like arrangements, seemed out of place in the predominantly abstract or landscape-inspired art colony of St Ives, Cornwall, where Sumray moved permanently after leaving his native London in 1968.

Yet Sumray, an immensely gifted and probing draughtsman who sometimes took a year to complete a large and detailed composition, pursued his imaginative vision with single- mindedness, in spite of periodically falling prey to bouts of melancholia and self-doubt about the whole enterprise of being a painter. "Painting for me is a battle," he said, "and I find the medium difficult."

Born in London in 1920, the son of an East End Jewish tailor, Sumray was largely self-taught, though he showed during the Second World War (during which he served in the Ministry of Economic Warfare) in mixed exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. After establishing "Sumray Textiles", specialising in hand-printed cottons, he studied with his twin brother, Harman, at Goldsmiths' College, London, between 1949 and 1953.

While at Goldsmiths' in 1950 the precocious 30-year-old artist was described by Wyndham Lewis in The Listener as one of the "best artists in England". The author of The Demon of Progress in the Arts (1954) saw in Sumray's well-crafted figuration and humane naturalism a foil to what he saw at the time as "that contagion that hurries an artist to zero" and led to the bogus extreme of advanced abstraction.

Sumray's early paintings such as The Old Jew (1948) and The Hunchback (1950) indeed eschewed abstraction, sharing with Wyndham Lewis sombre colour and stylised, mask-like faces. Sumray's melancholic figures were however closer to toys than to Lewis's mechanical tyrants. Despite early recognition Sumray abandoned painting in 1953, destroying all works in his possession, and dedicated his time to developing a printing business.

His workshop and engraving studio in Fitzroy Street was technically innovative, developing the flexographic process for wallpaper printing and packaging materials. South of Fitzroy Street, in Soho, he became a familiar figure at such haunts of artists as Muriel Belcher's Colony Room.

Financially secure, he moved in 1968 at the request of his wife, Pat - who came from a West Country naval family - to St Ives, where, after a 20-year hiatus, he resumed painting. He revisited an old theme in Lovers (1971), the double act peering back at the spectator with the touching pathos of early Picasso and articulated with the sharp lines and cylindrical anatomy of Léger and Helion.

Perhaps recognising the problematic nature of earning a living from painting alone, this intellectual cockney with a bluff, lovable exterior and a street-wise disposition alighted in Cornwall entirely on his own terms. In 1980 he became a full member of the Penwith and Newlyn art societies, exhibiting his complex and detailed crowd scenes in eclectic exhibitions. In 1981 he was selected for a Tolly Cobbold touring exhibition which visited museums in Oxford and Cambridge before coming to the ICA, London. In the same year he enjoyed solo shows at the Newlyn Orion Gallery in Penzance and at the Montpelier Studios, London.

A Penwith Society retrospective in 1984 was well received and the catalogue for his Falmouth Art Gallery retrospective in 1997 contained eulogies from friends such as the poet Al Alvarez and the BBC journalist Brian Barron.

Sumray's compositions contain the inscrutable and distanced quality of a dream, the mysterious figures summarised by Alvarez as "emblematic, like the kings, queens and jacks in a pack of cards". (Like Alvarez, he was a keen poker player.) From the male perspective at least, the subjects contain an offbeat, blatantly sexual symbolism, the sturdy thighs and voluptuous bodies confronting the spectator - who is reduced to voyeur. The rhythm and ornamental richness of decorative detail recall Mark Gertler and Stanley Spencer.

The sombre, melancholic realism of Sumray's early portraits contrast with the purely imaginative concoctions of the later dancing women, circus performers and peopled interiors. There was however, an underlying rhythmic energy common to both early and late work, the early pictures recalling the Vorticism of Jacob Kramer, Wyndham Lewis or C.W. Nevinson, the later figure compositions closer to William Roberts.

In latter years Sumray lived in a flat overlooking Porthmeor beach, not a bad fate for an artist from the East End with a keen feeling for social justice. (When last year he moved to a large suburban house in nearby Carbis Bay, he felt sadly estranged from the bustle of the sea front.)

Within the art life of St Ives he championed the cause of the underdog and the neglected, among whose ranks this talented and distinctive outsider belonged.
Peter Davies (Independent obituary - 23/7/2004

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Called in one obituary an 'austere painter of the modern St Ives School' (Davies) in description of his careful, perfected abstractions of landscape art. A charming and quiet man, both his teaching and his art stood as a beacon of high intellectual quality and counterbalance to the negative reaction to the political ferments often found in artistic circles.

Born in Liverpool, McKenzie attended Liverpool College of Art between 1946-1950, after completion of Army service. His first move into Cornwall was to St Ives in 1951, at an especially contentious and competitive time. He exhibited his work in a Solo show at Robin NANCE's shop on the main street.

In 1953 he moved on to Newlyn and Penzance, where he felt more at home, and where he taught at the Art School until 1964, whilst still exhibiting successfully in St Ives, Newlyn, London, New York and elsewhere.

Thereon for twenty years, he was the Head of the Department of Fine Art at Plymouth College of Art and Design, in residence there with his wife, Coralie CROCKETT (who died in 1973), and three daughters. In retirement from his teaching post at Plymouth, Alex returned to West Cornwall, living and working in his studio-home on Morrab Road, Penzance near the Penlee House Museum.

His sculptural and sensuous style in architectural and geometric formats enhanced the landscapes and sky-lines he loved and studied. Both his teaching and his clear, calm style influenced many artists who might have more public recognition. His reputation continues to grow.
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Born in London, Blow studied at St Martins School of Art and then the RA Schools, finishing up her student days at the Academie della Belle Arte, Rome in 1948. She taught at the Royal College of Art, London. After some further travelling she settled in London before arriving in West Cornwall, to stay a year in a cottage at Tregerthen to be near Patrick HERON and his wife Delia. Other close friends were Roger and Rose HILTON. Latterly she became a member of the Hypatia Trust and made a significant donation to the establishment of the WCAA in Penzance.

Over the remaining years she lived and worked both in London and in West Cornwall, associating herself with several societies in both places. In the 1990s she acquired one of the Porthmeor Studios, and from that studio came her first painting for the Tate Gallery St Ives (Porthmeor Beach exhibition). She joined the Penwith Society in 1958, and was elected an associate of the RA in 1971 (RA 1978).
Cornwall Artists Index

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Pearce achieved a great following and success as an artist in spite of being brain damaged by phenylketonuria. His career as an artist was directed and supported through the skillful care and acumen of his mother, Mary PEARCE, also a painter, and a good friend of many artists.

He was born in St Ives, and lived out his life there, painting "all the places in St Ives, the harbour, the church, Market Place" his favoured subjects being seascapes and landscapes, though he also liked flower painting. His intense interest in patterns and designs often found Pearce standing in the Penwith Gallery staring at a blouse or pair of patterned trousers, lost in the world of imprinting those 'pictures' for future use.

His remarkable story is told warmly in several biographical works listed below, beginning with the earliest by Ruth Jones, through to the most recent revision (2008) of Marion Whybrow's Bryan Pearce - A Private View, first published in 1985. His many friends, carers, and admirers who surrounded and supported him in life contributed greatly to the publications about his work.
Cornwall Artists Index
Also
Wikipedia
Art UK

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He was born at Brierly Hill, Staffordshire & educated locally. He was interested in painting from an early age & carried out his art training in the West Midlands, much influenced by D. A. Chatterton of Plymouth. Following a number of holidays & painting visits to Cornwall, he rented a cottage & studio at St. Ives, where he has now lived for more than 30 years. Since 1992 he has made working visits to Venice. He has exhibited at the RSMA since 1985 & at the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil(1989), & was elected Royal Society of Marine Artists in 1990.
Swan Gallery

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Born in St Pancras, London, Whybrow came to St Ives in 1980 with his wife, the art historian and novelist, Marion Davis WHYBROW. Terry is a painter always focused on 'the stillness' of his images, that which he calls 'harmony and silence'. 'Having travelled through figuration, abstraction and back, the same objectives remain. Harmony and Silence.

When living in London his 'paintings were hard edged abstractions of urban life,' but since coming to Cornwall 'all previous ideas and influences were overshadowed by the strength and textures of Cornwall' [from artist's statement, Falmouth AG exhibition 2000]. His paintings are held in private collections around the globe, and in Cornwall. Falmouth Art Gallery also holds his work in their public collection.

Terry Whybrow died in St Ives in March 2020.
Cornwall Artists Index

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My friend Victor Bramley, who has died aged 80, was the longest serving member of the St Ives Society of Artists, in west Cornwall. Elected to membership in 1961, he exhibited with the society every year until shortly before his death. He also showed regularly with the breakaway Penwith Society of Arts and was one of the few to bridge the gap between the two societies.

A self-taught artist, he arrived in St Ives in 1959, when Barbara Hepworth, Bernard Leach, Peter Lanyon and Patrick Heron were all working in the area. For several years Victor taught as well as practised art. He was equally at home in a variety of styles and genres. Making the same painting over and over again was of no interest to him, but good drawing and his contemplation of the "stillness of life" were.

He was born in Sheffield and grew up during the second world war. When he was a young schoolboy, his class was told by its teacher to put on their gas masks. Then they had to draw a tree. The teacher later picked out Victor's drawing and, displaying it to the class, said something to the effect that Victor could draw better with his gas mask on than the rest of them could without. It was Victor's first contact with art criticism and he never forgot it.

Although he was to live in Cornwall for some 55 years, he never forgot his early days in the north of England. He attended Firth Park grammar school, Sheffield, and remembered the look of despondency on the headteacher's face when he told him that, on leaving school, he wanted to be an artist. As it happened, he had heard a lot about the art colony in St Ives and, sensing that it might be the place where he could find out if he had any hopes of an artistic future, he plucked up enough courage to leave Sheffield and head for the south-west. Not long afterwards he met and married a fellow artist, Jacque Moran, with whom he lived for 20 years and who predeceased him.

In the early 1980s he met Bernadette Contrino, whom he married a few weeks before he died. She survives him.
Guardian obituary (Frank Ruhrmund) Also
Interview (2014)

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A prolific artist who lives and works in St Ives, he exhibits in mixed and solo shows around the country. His motifs, taken from life studies, typically include windows, still-lifes, harbours, and the landscape/seascape of the British coastline. These are painted with hard-line design, showing his fascination with design and an almost architectural definition of shapes.
Cornwall Artists Index

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Colin Birchall creates powerful, heavily textured abstract works on canvas and wooden panels. These attempt to convey the experience of being in the landscape of west Penwith as a participant rather than a detached observer.
Cornwall Artists Index

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Gary Long is a figurative painter who is invloved in the making of images concerned with the coast, sea, sky, weather and the impressions they leave.

Gary Long was born in Birmingham, England in 1945. He attended Birmingham College of Art after which he spent two years working as an illustrator in Vancouver, Canada. On returning to England, made advanced studies at Manchester College of Art graduating with the equivalent of an MA by research.

Since leaving college, Gary has worked as a successful illustrator on numerous national and international accounts in publishing and advertising.

He is an artist member of the Society of Illustrators in New York and a part time lecturer at the University College Falmouth. Gary, with his Canadian wife Pat, recently moved to St Ives from Devon to be closer to the environment that most inspires him..
Gary Long website

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Born and bred in St Ives, Cornwall, Eric Ward is one of a very small group of native professional artists. After leaving school, he worked as a fisherman until 1985 when he became St. Ives Harbour Master. In 1964 he joined the RNLI as a St. Ives Lifeboatman, was promoted to Coxswain in 1989 and retired after 34 years of service in 2000. After retiring from life-long service to the community and the seas around it, he was able to devote himself full-time to his studio work.

He began showing his work with Leon SUDDABY at Marazion in 1994, and continued with exhibitions thereafter. In 1996 the exhibition was in parallel with the BBC programme Video Diaries, Oil and Oilskin, the life of Eric Ward (life with the lifeboat and his art), that increased interest in his paintings of the world around him. His work was shown at Rainyday Gallery, Penzance in 1999.

In 2003 Halsgrove published Eric Ward's St Ives from his studio and beyond, telling the story of his life through coloured plates of his work.
Cornwall Artists Index

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Matthew Lanyon, who has died of cancer aged 65, was a Cornish painter whose passion for the landscape and cultural legacy of his beloved county ran as vibrantly as ore through his work. He made an immeasurable contribution to the art of the region.

His first major solo show, at the Rainy Day Gallery in Penzance in 2007, included a painting seven metres long entitled Journey to the Stars. In recent years, he continued to push the scale of his paintings towards the truly monumental, and had begun to experiment with architectural glass and tapestry. His final exhibition, In the Tracks of the Yellow Dog, held at the New Craftsman Gallery in St Ives in September, dealt with the grief he felt following his mother’s death in 2015. It was one of several exhibitions on which I had the pleasure of working with him.

Born in St Ives, Matthew was the third of six children of the painter Peter Lanyon and his wife, Sheila St John Browne. His father was a leading light of the postwar St Ives group, alongside artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo; consequently, Matthew was raised amid the artistic and intellectual atmosphere of British modernism.

Despite winning the art prize at Penzance grammar school as a child, he was discouraged from studying art, and went to Leicester University to take geology initially, and later linguistics and archaeology. After university, he travelled, and in 1976 met Suzanne Brown – with whom he later had a son, Arthur – and returned to Cornwall. He worked for some years as a joiner, but in his mid-30s gave in to the pressing desire to paint. He said: “It was not until 1988 that I began to take my artwork seriously. At that time, I was drawing and painting every morning with my son, in the days before he went to school. Between my father and my son, I had begun to address the problem of what anything is, or is meant to be, in a painting.”

A copy of Homer’s The Iliad given to him as a child, the “wondrous” blackboard diagrams drawn by his school geology teacher, Kipling’s Just So stories read to him at bedtime by his mother, the untimely death of his father in a gliding accident in 1964, and a practised manual skill were all influences in a lifetime of creativity, during which he conjured up satirical china plates, poetry, paintings, buildings, gardens and three-dimensional artworks.

Those who knew Matthew regarded him as a vivid, almost Shakespearean character, a man of intelligence and humour whose unique take on both life and landscape is apparent in his work.

Suzanne, whom he married in 2006, died in 2007. Matthew married his partner of eight years, Judith (nee Hodgkinson), earlier this year, and she and Arthur survive him.
Cornwall Artists Index

Mercedes Smith (Guardian obituary 9/12/2016)

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Born in Tilbury, Essex, Noel Betowski studied art at the Central School of Arts and Crafts before completing a teaching diploma at London University. In the early 1980s he and his wife Pam settled in West Cornwall in the village of Gulval near Penzance. By that time he had already achieved some recognition with sales at the RA Summer exhibition, and was showing at local venues in Cornwall such as the Salthouse Gallery in St Ives and other small galleries in Porthleven and Penzance. His subjects are landscapes, seascapes and abstracts.

In 1987 he embarked on managing his own gallery in Bread Street, Penzance, which operated for some years until the couple re-established their studio at a larger farm toward Land's End. Noel's work takes inspiration from the simple architectural forms of rural cottages, the sun, and the moon against backgrounds both geometric and mystical. These can be viewed on MySpace and YouTube, where their jointly performed music may also be heard.

Both Pam and Noel are avid and talented musicians. Pam is a professionally trained violinist and composer, and plays all manner of string instruments such as the Celtic harp. Noel plays a long list of instruments including the bouzouki, guitar, whistles and mandolin. Their jazz band performs locally at pubs and clubs in the West Cornwall area, and they also produces CDs of their haunting music, much of it composed by Pam. Their projects are built into suites of work that incline towards gypsy, Celtic and jazz forms.
Cornwall Artists Index

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Darren Clarke is an artist living and creating in St Ives. He attended the Art University in Bournemouth, where he gained a BA (Hons.) in Fine Art. Darren works mainly with oil paints. He attempts to communicate the relationship between Man and Nature. He says:

"I paint from within; the landscape inspires me and ignites my senses. the, the colur and the composition of what I feel, see and hear. The history and atmosphere of a location always influences the work I create, resulting in energetic and dramatic scenes, rich in texture and colour. The relationship between Mankind and Nature is important, how we affect the world around us and, in turn, how it affects us back."

Darren has exhibited at the Galleria and Stowe Gallery in St Ives, and a number of high street stores around Cornwall as well as numerous other locations in the last few years.

He normally exhibits annually in St Ives, at local venues as well as Cornish Galleries. Darren has also run workshops for autistic and vulnerable adults since 2011 in Dorset and Cornwall.
Cornish Galleries