An Early History of the St. Ives School of Painting.

Choppy Seas, St. Ives Alan Storer

In 1877 the arrival of the Great Western Railway transformed access to St Ives. What had once been a remote Cornish fishing village on Britain's far south-west Atlantic coast suddenly became accessible to artists seeking fresh inspiration, extraordinary light and new creative challenges. The foundations were being laid for what would become one of Britain's most influential artistic communities.

Oxford vicar's son Algernon Talmage, painting with his left hand after injuring his right in a shotgun accident, arrived to capture the unique atmosphere of the Cornish coast. Working from The Cabin on Westcotts Quay, alongside artists such as Thomas Millie Dow and Lowell Dyer, he became one of the key figures in the emerging St Ives School of Painting.

At the centre of this developing artistic colony stood Julius Olsson. A natural talent and largely self-taught artist, Olsson's paintings were accepted by the Royal Academy in 1890, and he joined the New English Art Club the following year. Together with Louis Grier and later Algernon Talmage, he helped nurture a generation of painters, including the celebrated Borlase Smart and many others.

Olsson did not let the grass grow under his feet. In 1912 he left St Ives and returned to London. During the First World War he joined the Royal Navy, painting numerous battleships and naval subjects. He married Edith, whose father was an Irish horse breeder, and in 1920 was elected a full Royal Academician. In 1942 his London studio was destroyed during the Blitz. After that, one hopes he lived happily ever after.

But the Americans were coming. They too wanted a slice of the St Ives painting cherry.

Impressionist painters Edward Emerson Simmons and Howard Russell Butler arrived in St Ives in 1886. Butler returned home after two years, but Simmons and his artist wife Vesta remained until 1891. American painter Sydney Laurence and Alexandrina Dupre arrived on honeymoon in the summer of 1889 and stayed for fifteen years. Canadian artist Emily Carr studied under both Olsson and Talmage, while American painter Walter Elmer Schofield and his wife worked in St Ives between 1903 and 1907, encouraging fellow Americans George Oberteuffer, Frank Shill and Frederick Judd Waugh to join them.

The Scandinavian connection was equally strong. Swedish painter Anders Zorn worked in St Ives during 1887–88 and later won a Gold Medal at the Paris Salon for Fish Market, St Ives. Australian-born painter Hayley Lever arrived in 1900, married local woman Aida Gale in 1905, and painted in St Ives until 1914 before returning to America, presumably taking his Cornish bride with him. One never knows.

There was another Australian too. E. Phillips Fox arrived and married fellow artist Ethel Carrick in 1903, adding yet another international strand to the growing St Ives story.

By the outbreak of the First World War, artists from Britain, America, Canada, Sweden and Australia had all been drawn to this remarkable fishing town on Cornwall's Atlantic edge. What had begun as a small artistic colony was becoming an international centre for painting.

Then came the First World War and, with it, an entirely new chapter of revolution, modernity and modern painting.

To be continued...

Allan Storer.