Visit West Cornwall

With regard the Newlyn School, Walter Langley (1852-1922) was the first to settle, making the village his home in 1882. Trained in Birmingham Langley had visited Newlyn in both 1880 and 1881, having also spent time painting in Brittany. His arrival was closely followed by that of his friend Edwin Harris, who was also from Birmingham.

In 1884, Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947) arrived, writing to his mother that "Newlyn is a sort of English Concarneau and is the haunt of many artists". In a matter of a few years, the colony of artists had grown considerably, and by September 1884 'The Cornishman' newspaper noted that there were no less than twenty-seven artists residing in Newlyn. These included Frank Wright Bourdillon, Frank Bramley, Percy Craft, W.T. Blandford Fletcher, Elizabeth Forbes (née Armstrong), Stanhope Forbes, Norman Garstin, Thomas Cooper Gotch , Frederick Hall, Edwin Harris, Harold Harvey, Walter Langley, Leghe Suthers, Albert Chevallier Tayler, Ralph Todd and Henry Scott Tuke.

By the end of the century the group began to disperse, with only a small number of artists still living in the Newlyn/Penzance area. Aiming to rebuild the Newlyn Colony after the departure of many of the original artists, Stanhope and Elizabeth Forbes founded a School of Painting in 1899, which brought a new generation of artists to west Cornwall. Their school attracted a large number of students, who were taught the 'plein air' techniques of painting outdoors, capturing the effects of ever-changing weather conditions upon the landscape, with models painted in situ. Newlyn's artistic and social life was regenerated and continued to flourish between 1900 and the First World War.