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Cornish art collection returns home for exhibition

Jake WallaceSouth West
News imageThe Bowerman Collection This painting shows a tired family on a horse and cart on a dark, winding country lane.The Bowerman Collection
Stanhope Forbes' work Lighting Up Time is included in the exhibtion

Paintings depicting life in Cornwall's fishing and rural communities more than a century ago have gone on display.

The exhibition brings together 40 works from the acclaimed Bowerman Collection of Newlyn School art, a movement of artists who settled in west Cornwall in the late 19th Century.

The works have returned to Cornwall before embarking on a national tour and will be displayed at the Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penzance until January.

Curator Alison Bevan said the work "captures the real lives and characters of this remote fishing community".

Bevan said the exhibition also highlighted artists who formed what she described as a second flowering of the colony at the turn of the 20th Century.

"With their more vibrant palette but equal passion for painting from life, this second generation re-energised Newlyn as a vibrant artistic hub, revelling in West Cornwall's sparkling light," she said.

The exhibition runs until 9 January before the collection begins a two-year tour of venues across England.

News imageThe Bowerman Collection The Weigh-In Bridge shows fishermen, traders and local people gathered around baskets of fish on a harbour bridge in NewlynThe Bowerman Collection
Stanhope Forbes' painting The Weigh-In Bridge depicting Newlyn harbour
News imageThe Bowerman Collection Three women gathered in a cottage interior, examining fabric in a quiet scene that captures everyday domestic life in late Victorian Cornwall.The Bowerman Collection
Albert Tayler Chevallier's painting: The Bolt of Cloth
News imageThe Bowerman Collection A group of people standing on a beach, their faces and posture suggest they tired from a day's fishing.The Bowerman Collection
Walter Langley's painting Breadwinners
News imageThe Bowerman Collection A person is lying in a bed. A small child is sat at the end of the bed. A woman is sat in a chair next to the bed. The Bowerman Collection
Walter Langley's painting Motherless
News imageThe Bowerman Collection A young farm worker standing beside heavy horses in a field.The Bowerman Collection
Harold Harvey's The Young Ploughman

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