Visit West Cornwall

While Walter Langley and Stanhope Forbes were establishing themselves in Newlyn, St Ives was also developing as a gathering place for artists. St. Ives was far more cosmopolitan than Newlyn, with artists coming from countries as far away as America, Scandinavia and even Australia to study the coastline, made beautiful by the ever-changing light and moods of the sea. Visiting British painters included James McNeil Whistler and Walter Sickert, who spent the winter of 1883 sketching the sea, sky and beach in a loose impressionistic style.

1888 saw the emergence of an Artists' Club, which enabled painters of the sea, such as Julius Olsson, Arnesby Brown, Adrian Stokes and Algernon Talmage, to get together and discuss different techniques for capturing the essence of the wild and rugged north coast of Cornwall.

As art historians now view it, the birth of the St Ives colony as a recognised entity came in 1928, when Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood 'discovered' Alfred Wallis, a retired fisherman who took up painting "for company" after the death of his wife. Wallis' naïve paintings were to inspire and influence many of the Modernist artists who were to form the St Ives group.

Although the initial era was short-lived (Nicholson and his wife Winifred did not remain in the area, and Christopher Wood met a tragic death in 1930), it sowed the seed for the development of the later group. In 1939, Nicholson was to return, this time with his second wife, Barbara Hepworth, at the invitation of the writer and artist Adrian Stokes. Naum Gabo, a fellow member of the international Constructivist Movement, and a number of other artists, including Sven Berlin and Herbert Read, followed them, staying in St Ives as an 'escape' from the Second World War. The art of this group is frequently exhibited at the Tate St Ives.