Henry moved to Cornwall in September 2003, after a MA in Art History from St Andrews University, Scotland and further studies in Fine Art at Kensington and Chelsea College, the Slade and Camberwell College of Art.
Garfit is the artist-manager of the Trewidden Studios, Buryas Bridge, west of Penzance. His work, regularly exhibited in London, Cornwall and other national venues, is consistently abstract and colourful. See www.henrygarfit.co.uk and www.trewiddenstudios.co.uk for further information.
In August 2011 the Cornishman has reported and welcomed a new initiative by Henry to work with 15 local artists, in establishing a new art school located at the Old Board School, Chywoone Hill. The arts programme will draw on the experience and skills of a number of local artists, and is now able to take bookings for its courses. See www.newlynartschool.co.uk for the range offered. The school has been awarded grant funding from the Arts Council, and is set up as an independent, not for profit educational facility. Tutors involved include the following: Neil PINKETT, Jason WALKER, Jesse Leroy SMITH, Jane ANSELL, Mary CROCKETT, Mark SPRAY, Paul WADSWORTH, Rachael KANTARIS, Maggie O'BRIEN, Gareth EDWARDS, Georgina HOUNSOME, David PATON and Samuel BASSETT among others.
In historical terms this new school, refers back to the original initiative made by Elizabeth and Stanhope Forbes to establish a like institution employing their own studios and those of others in the Newlyn Meadow nearby. That school was opened in 1899 as the NEWLYN SCHOOL OF PAINTING under the direction of Stanhope Forbes, and future historians will have to be careful to include dates, and correct titles - as there is often room for confusion! Getting around this difference, it is useful, as Garfit is doing, to refer to the older school programme of classes (indoor and outdoor) as the FORBES SCHOOL.
Born on 2 April 1851, Nonington, nr Aylesham, Kent (GRO), by 1892 he was living at Chywoone Grove, Newlyn with his wife Eugenie, two daughters and one son. His long career included exhibiting his work from 1874 to 1901 at the Royal Academy shows, and over virtually the same period at the British Institution.
Garland died, age 55 on 9 May, 1906 at Colchester, Essex (GRO).
After a degree in Fine Art at Newcastle, she took a Certificate in Education course at Plymouth University, followed by a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education from Exeter University. Since 1991 she lectured both at the Penzance School of Art and Falmouth College of Art (2000).
Tessa worked with the Artist-Led Projects Group (PALP) while in Cornwall. She was the artist-curator-organiser of the 2002 exhibition, Field of Vision, co-sponsored by the Newlyn Art Gallery and PALP, at the Tremenheere Sculpture Park. Her work has been exhibited at the Rainyday Gallery, Penzance.
Though she is now London-based she continues to maintain links with colleagues in Cornwall, and shows widely abroad and in London, working always with community involvement. Latterly her work has relied strongly on film photography and video presentation, with projects that recreate familiar and domestic environments, in which filming the audience and their responses plays a part.
Susannah Garland moved to France in 2008, where she exhibited her work widely. Currently she lives on the Lizard peninsula.
Her work is sold through National Trust properties in Somerset and Dorset, and is on permanent display at La Maison de Pays de l’Auxois Sud, in Burgundy, France. Her work has also been exhibited on several occasions at Wells Cathedral.
Beth Garnett obtained an MA in Illustration from Falmouth University.
Born in Wigan, Lancaster, Garnier was educated at Charterhouse School and originally trained as an engineer. He worked in engineering and technical drawing in Toronto before prospecting for gold in the Yukon.
After studying at Herkomer's school, Bushey (1910) he moved to Newlyn in 1912, studying further under Stanhope FORBES. In 1914 he shared a studio with Richard 'Seal' WEATHERBY at Trewarveneth Farm in Newlyn. Medically discharged from the Army in WWI, he joined the Royal Navy in 1916 and served as a Lieutenant. Throughout the War he kept his Orchard Cottage studio in Newlyn, and subsequently lived there to his death in 1970.
In 1917 he married his cousin Jill BLYTHE (or BLYTH), who was a fellow artist at FORBES SCHOOL. A strong supporter of the Society of Graphic Artists and the Royal West of England Academy, he was better known as an engraver, excelling in aquatints. Alerted to in the latter techniques due to a study of the work of William DANIELL RA, he took this on as his artistic mission in life in addition to the line engravings made direct to copper plate, which formed the basis for the aquatint production. His coloured aquatints of places such as Flushing, Gweek, the Helford River, Lamorna Cove and Polperro were highly regarded.
He was a long-time member of both NAG and STISA, and his writings included several short stories and a novel Bargasoles (1936). During WW II, he worked with the local Home Guard and the local Army Cadet Corps.
Jill BLYTH was born in Quidenham, Norfolk, the daughter of W D Blyth LL.D, ICS. Educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, she showed early promise as an artist. Taking up art on leaving school, in 1915 she came to Cornwall to study under Stanhope FORBES.
She lived with her mother at Myrtle Cottage, known as 'the Myrtage', run by Mrs Tregurtha and the home of many of the female students of the FORBES SCHOOL. She worked in portraiture, still life and embroidery. It was while she was a student at the Forbes School that she met her first cousin Geoffrey Sneyd GARNIER. They were married in 1917 in St Peter's Church, Newlyn, and settled in Orchard Cottage, Newlyn where they both had garden studios. They had three children - Peter (1918), Ann (1922) and Jeremy (1925).
Family responsibilities stood in the way of consistent work, but she continued to paint in oils and to design and create beautiful embroidered pieces; she was known to complain bitterly about the lack of time that a woman painter with a family could devote to her work.
The influence of Forbes in her portrait work is evident, and her works of Peter and Ann and the family dogs, dating from the early 1930s, are considered her best portrait groups. Nine of her oils were exhibited, all from private collections, at the Falmouth Group show in 1996.
One of the exhibiting group of artists that contribute to annual exhibitions at Gallery TRESCO on the Isles of Scilly. He paints in acrylics on canvas, and creates land and seascapes of a distinctively impressionist quality. Some of his titles are Yellow Buoy, Island Light II, Low Tide, Tresco, and Red Buoy II.
Garratt is a tutor at Newlyn School of Art (2016).
Halifax-born, Andrea studied at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham (1967-71) where she met painter John Garrihy (qv) and they married in 1969. After further study at Bristol University (1972-73) she taught in various educational establishments across the South West from Cheltenham to Newlyn Art Gallery, and continued to carve sculpture in stone, wood and plaster for commissions and exhibitions. For twenty years she had a studio in the Gatehouse of Corsham Court, and currently has one in her Penzance garden. Andrea also carves snow, which she obviously can't practise in Penzance. From 1992-2008 she was Captain of the UK Snow Sculpting team at international snow sculpting events in Canada, USA, Japan, Sweden and Norway (including the 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan).
Besides practising sculpture, she researches, lectures and writes on sculpture. She is South West correspondent for the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association newsletter, and has contributed articles on sculpture, crafts and women sculptors to the Dictionary of Women Artists, the on-line Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford), Sculpture Journal and Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall (Hardie, Ed 2009).
In 2000, she was awarded a Year of the Artist residency in Wiltshire - Sculptures in Corsham (mixed media) - where she exhibited on the streets of Corsham and appeared on Blue Peter (4th December 2000). In 2011 she had a six week residency/exhibition, ArtSpace, at the Pound Arts Centre, Corsham. In Cornwall she was the co-organiser of the Art Auction & Exhibition, Queen's Hotel (2004) for the establishment of the West Cornwall Art Archive. She has been a regular volunteer of the WCAA and a research associate of the Hypatia Trust. She was the exhibition organiser for the Hypatia Handbag fundraising art show, contributing her life-size doll of a cheerful bag lady to the creative mix of handbags in every shape and form. (2012) Her contribution to the artist files of the Hypatia libraries was considerable over the years, working on indexing and cataloguing, and adding numerous cuttings to the contemporary record.
In 2015 she was diagnosed with cancer; throughout her long therapies, she remained cheerful, having the great comfort of her husband John and their two daughters. She died on Easter Day, 27th March, 2016. Her contribution to community activity through work with the Hypatia Trust has been immense, and much appreciated.
Born in London John studied at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham 1965-68. He went on to teach in schools in Cambridgeshire and Bristol.
His 'Great Ebb Project', an event documented by photographs showing the action of the sea on three bands of pebbles painted red, yellow and blue on a Dorset beach was selected for the John Player Biennale II.
Under the name 'Tomfoolery' (Cockney rhyming slang) he designed and made painted jewellery ('Paintings you can wear') which were included in a survey of popular jewellery: Fancy Goods, a Scottish and Welsh Arts Council Touring Exhibition 1980/81.
His paintings are figurative and although the themes vary they all show his delight in colour and enjoyment of the process of painting.
He has a house in Penzance which he shares with his wife Andrea, a sculptor (qv). In 2006 John completed a mural for Trevelyan House The Mazey Day Parade Never Ends, celebrating the annual procession held in Penzance as part of Golowan Festival.
In 2008 he took part in a major public art project in Bath; - King Bladud's Pigs. His Sky Blue Pig was one of 100 life size fibre glass pigs decorated by artists displayed around the city throughout the summer.
Born in Caherconlish, County Limerick, Republic of Ireland (28 August, 1847), the son of Mary (née Moore) and Captain William Garstin. From a difficult childhood (his mother’s paralysis and invalidism, and his father’s suicide), he was brought up by loving aunts. After school at Victoria College, Jersey, he had short-term ‘trys’ at engineering, architecture and finally diamond hunting in South Africa (becoming a close friend of Cecil Rhodes), becoming involved in the Cape government and journalism.
In 1880 he began his art training at the Royal Academy in Antwerp with Verstraete, and then studied at Carolus-Duran’s Academy in Paris (1882-84), beginning to exhibit in British galleries during that period. Always he wrote, and recorded his reactions, journalism proving an excellent avocation throughout his life and one which he would pass on to his sons, Crosbie GARSTIN and Denis Garstin. His articles in The Studio and other magazines thread their way through the history of the Newlyn colony, always supportive of his working colleagues and their art. His daughter, Alethea GARSTIN would follow his other route and take-up art.
He married Louisa ‘Dochie’ Jones in 1886 after his ‘grand tour’ to Venice, Italy, Morocco and Spain, all of which added up to a large portfolio of work. The couple settled in Newlyn where many of his former colleagues from Antwerp had already set up, and where the general aversion to academic art agreed with his individualist and realist inclinations. In 1886 they lived at Mount Vernon, in Newlyn, though by 1895 they had moved into Penzance.
He was on the Provisional Committee of artists when NAG opened 22nd October 1895, and worked steadily with it over many years (see his Introduction to the Whitechapel Spring Exhibition of 1902, repr Hardie 2009), showing the work of artists from the various West Cornwall colonies. He regularly took groups of art students to his favourite painting haunts on the Continent, and he was a popular and much loved teacher.
Of his many titles, The Rain, it raineth every day (Penlee House Collection) is undoubtedly one of his finest. A portrait of Mary Augusta Carlidna Bolitho was exhibited at Penlee House, Penzance in 2005 (Private Collection). Norman Garstin died on 22 June, 1926, age 78, in Penzance (GRO).
The only daughter of the artist Norman GARSTIN and Louisa Jones Garstin (known as 'Dochie'), Alethea was born in Penzance and the only one of the three siblings to become a visual artist (the others were writers like their father). Both Alethea and her brothers Crosbie and Denis, however, are listed by Iris Green in her study of the pupils of the FORBES SCHOOL, though no dates are listed.
Alethea had her first painting accepted by RA in 1912, and she exhibited regularly thereafter. She painted en plein air, subjects taken mainly from her many travels, as well as Cornish village life. She travelled extensively to destinations including Ireland, Belgium, France, Italy, Morocco, Kenya and Australia. She was a friend to many artists and was well-loved by all, accompanying Dod PROCTER on some painting holidays, but finding the experience quite exhausting and sometimes embarrassing due to Dod's drinking habits.
In 1960 she moved to Zennor where she spent the rest of her life, and died shortly before a major exhibition of her and her father's work opened in St Ives in 1978. The general impression is that her work has so far been neglected and that critical acclaim is overdue. Her portrait of Norman GARSTIN is located at Plymouth City Museum. This was illustrated in the Falmouth Art Gallery catalogue for the Women Artists in Cornwall exhibition in 1996, along with seven other oils by the artist.
Crosbie was the first son of Norman GARSTIN and his wife Dochie, and the older brother of Denis (d 1918 at Archangel) and Alethea GARSTIN who grew up in the artist colonies of West Cornwall. He proved to be a creative force in several artistic directions. Not a good pupil, he was nevertheless an excellent athlete, becoming head boy at his school due to his captaincy at rugger and swimming.
In the summers he accompanied his parents on their summer schools abroad, making friends and colleagues with many artists such as Frances HODGKINS and other pupils working under his father's tutelage. From 1912 he went abroad to 'the Dominions' to make his living as a cowboy, a sailor, a jack of many talents, but returned from Africa when war was declared, and joined up (King Edward's Light Horse).
He also studied briefly at the FORBES SCHOOL [Ed: Hale comments there is no evidence for this], but like his friend, Fryn JESSE, he turned his talents to writing. His first book Vagabond Verses, for which Alethea designed the cover, was published in 1917.
He is best known as a novelist, creating the Penhale trilogy: Owls' House (1923), High Noon (1925), and The West Wind (1926), and collaborating with Mrs Alfred Sidgwick on the novel The Black Knight. He was also the writer of the poem 'Rondeau' better known as 'On Newlyn Hill' as set to music for a Cornish male voice choir.
His unexpected disappearance in 1930, surmised to be in a boating accident (no trace or body ever found) is one of West Cornwall's enduring mysteries.
Writer and lecturer Ronald Gaskell died from cancer at Cape Cornwall on Tuesday, April 13. He was 83. He was born and grew up in Glasgow where he graduated from university having studied English literature. Just after WWII he served in the British Army in Germany, lecturing to soldiers soon to be demobilised who wanted to pursue further education. After teaching in Scotland, he then worked for the Commonwealth Universities Office, London. From teaching English literature at Nottingham University he moved on to the University of Bristol, teaching mainly Shakespeare and modern poetry, retiring as a senior lecturer after 20 years. In retirement he moved with his wife, the craftsman-potter Alice GASKELL, and their family to Cornwall where they lived at Cape Cornwall beside the sea. [from his Obituary, Cornishman, 22 April 2010]
In the first year of the opening of Trevelyan House (2002-3), Chapel Street, Penzance, Gaskell presented a series of study days on women writers and poets, to a packed and appreciative audience of members and visitors. His calm, quiet but determined and courteous explication of complex ideas was well-known, as were his characteristic white trainers, employed for all occasions. A tall and graceful man, he was always an ornament to any literary or artistic event.
His publications are several, including many poems in journals and magazines, as well as a collection (Rock with Water) and further 'mini-collections'. One of these, The Cape, evolved into a collaboration with the painter Kurt JACKSON, also called The Cape, published by Truran Press in 2002.
An American by birth, Alice came first to Britain on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1961. She married the poet and academic Ronald GASKELL, and following his retirement from Bristol University, the couple and their two children moved to Cape Cornwall. Here Alice established her own pottery, and over a couple of decades produced simple graceful vases and bowls in porcelain with muted soft glazes in her characteristic maroon and green colourings.
Her pottery sold very well in gift shops (NAG) and in arts and crafts venues of all sorts. She also exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions, and was one of the first to present a solo show of work at the newly opened Jamieson Library series at Newmill, Penzance (1986-98).
First trained as an engraver, the artist then studied at the RA Schools and travelled extensively throughout Britain. He produced watercolours, and his illustrations were employed widely in guidebooks and historical studies (Cornwall, Wales, etc). He made a painting of St Michael's Mount, which was used as the front cover of the illustrated guide book published by John St Aubyn in 1978.
Martin Hardie comments that his work was certainly accomplished but not necessarily original. From 1827 he worked as a drawing master in Camberwell, travelling widely in all of the countries of the UK, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, producing pictures for replication. Many of his drawings were engraved for books on English topography. The artist died in Camberwell on January 17, 1876. His daughter, Maria Gastineau, also became an artist.
Sarah Gatter creates handbuilt 'teardrop' pots in porcelain, experimenting with textural glazes.
Yolanta Gawlik works from Krowji Studios in Redruth. She obtained an MA in Authorial Illustration from Falmouth University in 2021.
Gear had a distinguished career on several Continents, and was part of the international COBRA group (1948-51) of artists interested in abstract art and Marxism whilst strongly anti-Surrealist.
Cornwall played only a tiny part in his artistic portfolio of arts and administration: in June 1948 the artist spent ten days in St Ives, producing about ten watercolours and six small oils.
He taught and curated in Australia and Birmingham, and lived in Birmingham.
The son of Henry Malcolm GEOFFROI, London-born Harry was brought to Penzance as a baby when his father was appointed the first director of the Penzance School of Practical Art, which was subsequently to become known as the Penzance School of Art.
Harry became a painter and tutor at the School, and supported his parents in their sustained efforts to raise funds for the building of its permanent home in Morrab Road. The School opened in 1881 and over the next fourteen years 'became the centre for teaching, exhibiting and raising funds for local art in West Cornwall, mainly due to the efforts of the Geoffroi family.' (Waverly)
Harry was appointed to the post of Art Master at Redruth School of Art, also acting as Assistant Master (to his father) at Penzance. He died suddenly of an asthma attack on the 3 November 1896 in Penzance, and is buried there.
Born in Boulogne, France, Geoffroi moved to London at the age of fifteen and studied art at South Kensington School of Art. In Kelly's Directory for 1856 he was one of five 'artists' listed for the whole of the County of Cornwall, and described himself as a Professor of Drawing and Painting.
He was first Master of the Penzance School of Art, founded in September of 1853 and started initially in rooms above the Princes Street Hall. By the end of 1853, the popular classes had moved to Regent House at Voundevour Lane, Penzance. In Views and Likenesses (1988), about the work of photographers in Cornwall and Scilly in the years 1839-1870, Charles Thomas suggests that Geoffroi, even if not a photographer himself (possibly an early amateur), was open to displaying 'a fine collection of photographs' amongst the pupils' display for their annual show in 1854.
In 1866 he lived in Voundeveor Lane next to the School, and served additionally as master of Truro School of Art, visiting weekly. To this dual post, he also held the post of Visiting Art Master at Truro School. With great efforts from his wife Elizabeth ('Lazzie') and their children, money was raised by subscriptions locally and abroad to construct new purpose-built premises at the top of Morrab Road, which opened in March 1881. This was one of the venues used by Newlyn artists to exhibit work prior to the construction of the Passmore Edwards Gallery (Newlyn Art Gallery, opened in 1895), and was part-time employment for many years for stalwarts of the art circles of the area.
He was the father of Harry Malcolm GEOFFROI.
Referenced by Whybrow and Tovey as a visitor to St Ives in September of 1891 and joining the Golf Club with the other artists in December of that year. He exhibited in the Show Day at St Ives in March 1892.
Exhibiting between 1911-14 at the RHA, he gave the address of Eversham, Stillorgan, Co. Dublin. Nothing further is known at this stage.
Herbert Tidmarsh George was a student of John Noble BARLOW, with whom he worked in Lamorna in the winter of 1906. He was born and brought up in Clerkenwell, London, the son of John Bellamy George, who described himself as an artist in woven fabrics and carpet designer, and his wife Elizabeth. Herbert had studied art previously at South Kensington and at Bushey, and in 1891 was living and working with his father in Islington. He married Edith Wilkinson in the same year and was living in Hindhead, Surrey.
He is first recorded in Cornwall in 1906, when he sold the work 'Landscape with Sheep' at Newlyn, and also exhibited 'Mousehole' at the RCPS exhibition that year. He indicated that he had studied in both Newlyn and St Ives and so will have spent time at the Forbes School as well as with Barlow.
His first success at the Royal Academy was in 1907 with 'In the Vale of Lamorna' and the following year he exhibited 'The Woods of Rosemorran from Keneggie'. He continued to visit west Penwith over the course of the next few years and was staying at Cliff House Hotel at the time of the 1911 census.
By 1915 he had moved to Hampstead, and then by 1926 to Gomshall, Surrey. He remarried Ethel Mary Loftus in 1931 and continued to exhibit until at least 1939. However, very few of his paintings have surfaced. Ethel and he were living at Havant, Hampshire at the time of his death in December 1957.
Esther George was born in Salop, studying at Birmingham School of Art, Chelsea Art School and Herkomer's at Bushey.
Tovey provides a photograph of the artist working in open air (p56), and in the 1924 Show Day at St Ives she exhibited a portrait of a lady and a child playing with coloured balloon balls. She was married to the artist Ernest Borough JOHNSON.
The artist lived at Hindhead and Gomshall, Surrey, and studied at South Kensington, Herkomer's at Bushey and Newlyn, under Stanhope FORBES, and in St Ives under John Noble BARLOW.
He was working in the Lamorna valley in 1905, and in 1906 exhibited and sold Landscape with Sheep at NAG's Summer exhibition.
His sending-in addresses are listed as Hindhead, Surrey (1906), London (1915) and Gomshall, Surrey (1926).
Recent correspondence (2012) reveals two watercolours indicating places where Herbert George painted, being Aston Tirrold, Berkshire [now in Oxfordshire] and the Cole Kitchen Farm, Gomshall.
A fisherman by trade, George was born in Mousehole and did not take up painting until he was in his seventies. Using childrens' paints and bits of paper and card, it was his meeting with Alethea GARSTIN that brought his prolific talents to the fore. He was the grandfather of the artist Jack PENDER.