Jules Bastien-Lepage and Naturalism
Bastien-Lepage 1848-1884 was a French Naturalist artist who influenced academic art towards a naturalism that was less adventurous than impressionism.
By 1883, a critic could proclaim that "The whole world paints so much today like M. Bastien-Lepage that M. Bastien-Lepage seems to paint like the whole world." Part of his influence was due to the number of students who he trained and affected.
Naturalism was eclipsed in Art History by Impressionism and Post-Impressionism but it was probably the most popular art form in the late nineteenth century.
British Artist Colonies
Naturalism required a location where the beauty and complexity of nature and man could be portrayed. This attachment of the art to a location led to the foundation of colonies of artists.
Ditchling Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic 1921 – 1988
Glasgow and Kirkudbright – Glasgow School Late 19th- Early 20th C
The Holland Park Circle late 19th C
Newlyn 1880s – Early 20th C
Staithes 1894 - mid 20th C
St Ives 1928-
Walberswick 1890s – early 20th C
The Newlyn School
in 1877 the Great Western Railway reached the far west of Cornwall. The sea, light and beauty of the landscape attracted many artists and by the early 1880s Stanhope Forbes and Frank Bramley had settled in Newlyn.
Stanhope A. Forbes 1857–1947
Born 18 November 1857 in Dublin, the son of a railway manager and a French mother. He studied at Lambeth School of Art, the R.A. Schools 1874–8 and for two years in Paris under Bonnat.
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| Stanhope Forbes |
He was Influenced by Bastien-Lepage and painted in Brittany with La Thangue 1880.. He settled in Cornwall 1884 and became a leading member of the Newlyn School. He was a founding member of the New English Arts Club. Stanhope began exhibiting at the R.A. in 1878, became an A.R.A. in 1892 and R.A. in 1910. He married Elizabeth Armstrong who was a painter in1889 and founded with her the Newlyn School of Art 1899. He visited Brittany in 1891, Holland 1894 and the Pyreneees 1898. He died at Newlyn on 2 March 1947.
Frank Bramley 1857-1915
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| Portrait of Frank Bramley |
He attended Lincoln School of Art from 1873 to 1878 and studied from 1879 to 1882 with Charles Verlat at the Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. After a period in Venice (1882–4) Bramley joined the artists' colony in Newlyn, Cornwall, where he stayed until 1895.
Bramley regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1884 to 1912. He was made an ARA in 1894 and an RA in 1911. He settled in Grasmere, Westmorland (now Cumbria), in 1900.
A Hopeless Dawn (1888; London, Tate; see England, fig. 21) successfully combined formal strengths with the dramatic and emotional power. It was purchased by the Chantrey Bequest trustees and established Bramley's reputation.
Albert Chevallier Tayler (1862–1925)
Tayler was educated at Bloxham School and The Royal Academy School. He also visited Paris and was familiar with the latest developments in art. He was one of the earliest members of the Newlyn School and stayed in West Cornwall for 12 years.
Tayler moved to London around 1900 and painted cricketers and portraits. His 1909 “Elizabeth Barrett Browning” captures his style in this period and perhaps an Edwardian nostalgia for a passing of romance:
Elizabeth Forbes (née Armstrong) 1859 – 1912
Elizabeth was born in Canada and moved to Europe to further study painting in the early 1880s, moving from Germany to Brittany and Holland.
She moved to Newlyn in 1885 and married Stanhope Forbes in 1889. They had one son, Alec. Elizabeth and Stanhope opened the Newlyn Art School together and offered painting holidays to the wealthy and artistically inclined.
Henry Scott Tuke, RA RWS (1858 – 1929)
Although born in York, Henry's family moved to Falmouth when he was only one year old so he qualifies as a Cornish artist. His family were Quakers and he was educated at a Quaker school in Weston-super-Mare. In 1875, at the age of 17, he joined the Slade School of Art and studied under Sir Edward Poynter.
In 1877 he won a scholarship which paid his Slade fees and allowed him to travel to Italy and France. He studied under the ubiquitous Jules Bastien-Lepage who helped set the style for late victorian academic painting.
Tuke moved to Newlyn in 1883 but left for Falmouth in 1885 to pursue his painting of male nudes. He became a member of the Royal Academy in 1914.
Thomas Cooper Gotch 1853-1931
Gotch was born in Kettering and attended a series of art schools from 1876 to the early 1880s. These included the Heatherley's art school in London in 1876, Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp in 1877 and 1878, Slade School of Fine Art in 1879 and Académie Julian and Académie Laurens in Paris in the early 1880s. He met his future wife, Caroline Yates and befriended Henry Scott Tuke at the Slade.
He married Caroline in 1881 in Newlyn and they settled in the town in 1887.
In his earlier work (1880s) he painted en plein air in a naturalistic style.
Later he adopted the Pre-Raphaelite style.
British Impressionism and the New English Art Club
The Newlyn artists were particulary important because they were central to the foundation of the New English Art Club. Early founders were: Thomas Cooper Gotch, Frank Bramley, John Singer Sargent, Philip Wilson Steer, George Clausen and Stanhope Forbes.
The NEAC was founded because of dissatisfaction with the Royal Academy. The NEAC still exists and hosts annual exhibitions of figurative art.
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