MALVERN HILLS DECORATIVE AND FINE ARTS SOCIETY

SEA CHANGE: ART IN ST IVES

With the heyday of the rural art colony over, St Ives needed to find a new identity and, against a very testing political, economic and artistic backdrop, it eventually did so in 1927 with the formation of the St Ives Society of Artists, which offered membership to any artist who had ever worked in Cornwall at any juncture in their career. Nevertheless, during this period of transition, St Ives still managed to attract a wide range of British and foreign artists and to inspire them to produce interesting, beautiful or innovative work.

Against the backdrop of Borlase Smart’s evocative war paintings (unknown despite 32 being owned by the Imperial War Museum), the talk looks at the monumental symbolist works of the Belgian refugee artist, Emile Fabry, the “experimental years” of the New Zealander, Frances Hodgkins, and the early pointillist work of Sir Claude Francis Barry.

The 1920s saw not only the heyday of traditional artists such as Charles Simpson, Moffat Lindner and John Park, but also a booming etching market, with Alfred Hartley becoming a leading influence. Of the many noted visitors, the most famous are Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson, who, in 1928, discovered the naive paintings of Alfred Wallis, who had been a local rag-and-bone man. The 1920s also saw the dawn of the craft tradition in St Ives with the establishment of the Leach Pottery.

DAVID TOVEY

David Tovey was born in 1953 and was educated at his father's preparatory school, Tockington Manor, near Bristol and at Clifton College, Bristol, before reading Jurisprudence at Pembroke College, Oxford. After twenty years as a Solicitor, he returned to University to read History Of Art at The University Of Warwick. He is now an independent art historian, specialising in Cornish art.

His particular interest in St Ives art derives from the fact that his great-grandfather, William Titcomb, was one of the early settlers in the colony. However, he also has an extensive knowledge of artists of the Newlyn School and other artists working in the Cornish art colonies at Lamorna and Falmouth in the years prior to 1950.

Since 2000, David has written a number of highly acclaimed books on Cornish art (see St Ives Art Books) and has curated, or assisted with the curatorship of, several exhibitions on behalf of Tate St Ives, Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance and Cheltenham Art Gallery (see St Ives Art Exhibitions). He is now recognised as the leading authority on early St Ives art.

David lectures widely on Cornish representational art, particularly to members of The National Association for Design and Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS) and to Friends organisations of Public Art Galleries.