She exhibited jewellery at the first combined arts and craft exhibition at NAG in December 1924.
A London painter who exhibited four marine paintings at the RA between 1896 and 1903, whose works included A Cornish Harbour, The Turn of the Tide (1896), A Ground Swell (1899), and others.
Noted by Whybrow at St Ives in the earliest lists; no further information currently available.
H Besley published a series of vignettes of Cornish scenes, that were issued in booklets and used to illustrate guidebooks. They were engraved, and included tin mining scenes, towns, Land's End, and entitled Besley's Views of Cornwall (c1854).
Born in Tilbury, Essex, Noel studied art at the Central School of Arts and Crafts before completing a teaching diploma at London University. In the early 1980s he and his wife Pam settled in West Cornwall in the village of Gulval near Penzance. By that time he had already achieved some recognition with sales at the RA Summer exhibition, and was showing at local venues in Cornwall such as the Salthouse Gallery in St Ives and other small galleries in Porthleven and Penzance. His subjects are landscapes, seascapes and abstracts.
In 1987 he embarked on managing his own gallery in Bread Street, Penzance, which operated for some years until the couple re-established their studio at a larger farm toward Land's End. Noel's work takes inspiration from the simple architectural forms of rural cottages, the sun, and the moon against backgrounds both geometric and mystical. These can be viewed on MySpace and YouTube, where their jointly performed music may also be heard.
Both Pam and Noel are avid and talented musicians. Pam is a professionally trained violinist and composer, and plays all manner of string instruments such as the Celtic harp. Noel plays a long list of instruments including the bouzouki, guitar, whistles and mandolin. Their jazz band performs locally at pubs and clubs in the West Cornwall area, and they also produces CDs of their haunting music, much of it composed by Pam. Their projects are built into suites of work that incline towards gypsy, Celtic and jazz forms.
Jane Betteridge is an artist and tutor who divides her time between Leicestershire and St Ives, where she has a studio.
Beusmans was born in Hampshire and moved with his parents to Cornwall, where the senior Beusmans ran a retail pottery shop. John helped them in the business and began potting himself in the 1960s. Preparing for a career in ceramics, he studied the art of throwing at Redruth School of Art. He sold ceramics from his parents' shop, and then set up his own Carn Pottery in 1971 at Nancledra, near Penzance, where there is still an active commercial pottery today.
In 2005 a book about the Carn Pottery and the work of John Michael Beusmans, was published, as referenced below.
In 2013 Bevan opened a studio at Pendeen. She produces ceramics for both domestic use as well as studio sculptures. She also paints and creates mixed media pieces.
She exhibits with the Lamorna Valley Group.
Bew studied ceramics at Camberwell School of Art (with A G Hopkins).
Prior to arriving in St Ives he had established a pottery within a Quaker settlement in the Rhondda Valley, Wales. At Leach pottery (1938-42), his early work focused on porcelain, with an interest in coloured glazes; his later work concentrated on earthenware.
A former Bristol-based police officer, Andy Bibbings took early retirement in 2015 to move to Newlyn and pursue his love of art. His talent at watercolours soon caught the eye of Jill Stein, the former wife of celebrity chef Rick Stein. His representations of marine creatures have been reproduced on the Stein homeware merchandise and kitchen textiles, to great success. He also paints portraits of dogs and horses.
Geoffrey Bickley creates sculptures of birds in their natural surroundings. His preferrred material is reclaimed pine. Living in St Erth, he gains inspiration for his subjects from the nearby Hayle estuary. He is represented by the Lighthouse Gallery in Penzance.
Jill Biddick started painting in the 1990s. After becoming an Adult Education tutor, teaching watercolours, she took an 'A' Level course in Art & Design. She has exhibited at Tregony Gallery on the Roseland peninsula, and at Ebenezer Gallery, Polperro.
Suzy Billing-Mountain had a business in Hemel Hempstead before moving to Cornwall in 2001. While recovering from a period of ill-health, she joined a watercolour class, moving on to explore the possibilities of mixed media.
She completed a BTEC at Saltash College and embarked on a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art at Plymouth University, which she was unable to complete due to ill-health. But she acknowledges the power of art and the its contribution towards the process of recovery, and devotes as much time as possible to the development of her art practice.
Billington is an abstract artist working from a studio on the Lizard peninsula. He has exhibited widely within the UK, USA, Germany and Spain, with work in museums and private collections worldwide. In summer of 2012 his work was selected for the Carousel Horses Project at the Hall for Cornwall.
Binch's studio is based in Pendeen. For the past forty years her original, published illustrations have been inspired by Caribbean subjects, gipsy horses and the natural world. She has also written and illustrated children's books.
Work by this artist is included in the University College Falmouth Art Collection.
The son of James Bingley, a Brushmaker. Bingley was a widower from Wellington, Surrey, and married Elizabeth Mary Harvey, daughter of Andrew Harvey (a Fisherman) at Paul Parish Church in 1874, giving his occupation as Artist on the Marriage Certificate. (The witnesses for the wedding were Henry Pearce Glasson and Mary James.) Wood comments that he 'painted in an attractive impressionist style.'
An artist who settled in Cornwall during WWII, remaining in the county until the 1950s. His name is sometimes seen erroneously as Herbert Harding Bingley, due to information given in Jeremy Wood's Dictionary of neglected and overlooked painters. Further information has generously provided by a relation who is thoroughly researching Bingley's artistic career, and has given permission for the use of his paragraphs (following) from his website. Many thanks for this help.
'Henry Harding Bingley was a prolific artist who was born in London and lived for some time in Cornwall in the Perranporth area. During his working life he was an Associated Member of the British Watercolour Society (BWS), a member of the Royal Miniature Society (RMS) and a member of the Society of Miniaturists (SM). The earliest dated painting to be found so far is from 1912, the latest, 'Autumn "A woodland stream on the Avon, Hampshire"', which was painted in 1971. His paintings almost always include water and he is best known for watercolours of Cornish coastal scenes. However there are pictures in existence that portray Devon, Wales, Scotland, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Dorset and London. Bingley also used oils but these pictures are far rarer. Most of his work consists of rural landscape or seascape but he has been known to paint interiors and still life. The quality of his work varies, from what professionals would call "pot boilers" quickly dashed off to satisfy the tourists and work of a much higher quality with excellent detail. He signed his paintings as H.H. Bingley in the earlier years as script and later in uppercase.'
A correspondent (2019) has told us of two seascapes of Perranporth by Bingley in his possession, one of which is entitled 'Off to the Fishing Grounds'.
Etchel Binns was born at Batley, Yorkshire. He worked as a self-employed signwriter while studying art in the Sheffield area where he belonged to several societies of artists. It is believed that he was a founder member of the Rotherham Society of Artists.
Immediately after WWI he began to visit West Cornwall and met members of the artists' colony at Newlyn and Lamorna. He was greatly attracted to the unspoilt fishing cove of Penberth and in 1922 bought a small plot of land on the hillside in the Penberth Valley. In 1927 he moved permanently to Cornwall and though he never had done any manual work, he designed and built a bungalow.
Sadly in 1930 he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx which required a lengthy stay in a London Nursing Home, and afterwards could only speak in a whisper. Though this curtailed his social life and interaction with fellow painters, he remained quite prolific in his work with oils, water colours and etchings. In the early 1930s until his death in 1945, he kept a studio at Porthgwarra in a disused seine loft rented from the St Aubyn Estate. Most of his work was sold from there, though he also exhibited at the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery, Newlyn, as a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists.
Born in Genoa, Italy, the artist was the only child of Surgeon-General Sir John Harry Ker Innes KCB who was appointed an honorary surgeon to Queen Victoria. She married the artist Lionel BIRCH in 1893 in Kensington (GRO). At the Opening Exhibition of NAG in 1895 Mrs Birch exhibited Chrysanthemums, which was sold. She did not exhibit often and the whereabouts of her work is currently not known.
In 1902 she loaned a portrait of Alexandra Forbes Forbes to the Spring Exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, together with most of the West Cornwall artists from Newlyn and St Ives. In 1909 she exhibited Echoes from Olden Time, also at NAG. She was the author of Stanhope A FORBES, ARA, and Elizabeth Stanhope FORBES, ARWS (1906), which was reprinted for the first time in 2005 (Cornish Classics). This book, partly authored by Elizabeth FORBES (chapters within the book in her own words) is one of a scarce number of contemporaneous accounts of the artistic life of the area. Constance Birch died in Ottery St Mary, Devon on April 13 1926, aged 61 (GRO).
Born in Flagstaff Cottage, Lamorna (the eldest daughter of Samuel John Lamorna BIRCH and Houghton VIVIAN), she was often painted by the artists of the Newlyn colony and their visitors (such as Laura KNIGHT and Harold KNIGHT, Thomas Cooper GOTCH, Phil Whiting, etc). Mornie and her sister Joan both showed handicrafts, along with their mother, at the Newlyn Art Gallery in the 1920s and 30s, and both were to develop talents in watercolour and oils. Her beloved Lamorna featured regularly in her work, and she also specialised in flower painting. She was educated at Badminton School, Bristol, taking some classes at Bristol School of Art.
In 1939 Mornie and her husband Jimmy (James Lennox Kerr, the writer) returned to Cornwall from Scotland where they had settled, and where she had taken further art lessons in Paisley. Following her mother's death in 1944, she and Jimmy ran the family home of Flagstaff on the cliffs above Lamorna Cove, looking after her father there until his death in 1955. In later life, she focused on driftwood sculpture.
A friend to many artists of her father's circle, including a lifelong friendship with Laura KNIGHT, she exhibited regularly in mixed shows at Newlyn. Her first success at the Royal Academy was in 1939, and she continued to be hung there regularly throughout her father's life. She was Chairman of the NSA Council (1953-5), becoming Hon President following her father's death that same year. Despite subsequent diminished artistic success, Mornie was a hugely influential figure in the Lamorna valley who was considered an excellent teacher and enjoyed many close friendships.
Jimmy died in 1963, and she continued painting, setting up a teaching and painting circle which continued under her supervision until her death at Lamorna in 1990.
Their work was displayed annually at the Lamorna Village Hall, where the series continues to the present day. An E L Kerr Archive is kept in the WCAA, gathered for a small Retrospective mounted at the Jamieson Library, Newmill by friends in 1990. Carn Gloose was exhibited at Penlee (2002), and Still life with Jug was sold in 2004 at the Queens Hotel, Penzance Auction for the WCAA Establishment Fund.
A biographical memoir, In Time & Place, Lamorna, was published in 1994 by her friend and pupil, Melissa Hardie, and is based upon her long life among the artists of the West Cornwall area. It is largely abstracted within Artists in Newlyn & West Cornwall: Dictionary and sourcebook (2009). She is buried near her father and her friend Pog YGLESIAS in the burial ground at Paul.
Her son, the late Adam KERR, and his artist wife Judith KERR, kept the artistic traditions of Flagstaff Cottage, Lamorna alive for the area, with Adam serving as President of the Lamorna Society of Artists who work and exhibit together in the Valley. Many of Mornie's former pupils are working today.