FORBES SCHOOL of Painting

In 1899 Stanhope FORBES and his wife Elizabeth FORBES formally opened their School of Painting and Drawing at Newlyn.  The advertisement for it was headed 'NEWLYN -- A CLASS for DRAWING AND PAINTING from the LIFE', and it included in the brief statement of its intent, the following: 'In addition, a Studio adapted for the especial study of figures in the open air, and of animals in their natural environment of landscape will shortly be opened.'

Primary source information has been gathered by Iris Green in her 2002 study of the students of the Newlyn School of Painting (the formal name of the organisation), resulting in the publication of her monograph, Posing the Model. The list of pupils that Green compiled is not exhaustive, and without detailed attendance records (that do not remain in the Forbes family papers at the Tate Archive or in the WCAA) can never be so. Nevertheless, it is a seminal study from primary sources, and has been gleaned from Stanhope Forbes’s letters and diary entries, dictionaries, magazine articles concurrent with the school’s operational years 1899-c1941, and family letters that describe the experience of ‘being a pupil’. Some names have been added by our research team to Green’s original list. These names together with lists of known pupils at other local artist-led schools, are available in the Dictionary described below.

In the 1904 Studio, the tuition offered at the Forbes' School was described thus:  ‘Newlyn, A Class for Drawing and Painting from the Life’ and the prospective student was advised to write for Full Particulars, to Stanhope A Forbes ARA, Trewarveneth, Newlyn, Penzance. A detailed description of the school, and how it was managed, is included in Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall 1880-1940, A Dictionary and Sourcebook (Hardie 2009) as written by Gladys Beattie Crozier in 1904 for The Girls’ Realm (illustrated).