Trained under Benjamin Constant, the artist studied at the Royal Academy Schools and exhibited at the RA and widely on the continent. She lived in Axminster, Beer and London, and visited St Ives during the 1921-39 period (Whybrow).
Muriel COLDWELL (SEE also Muriel BURGESS) was a Slade student from 1897, but had been a pupil artist in St Ives the previous year. Her home was in Kingsland Grove, Shrewsbury, and she appears to have exhibited at Birmingham and SWA until about 1905 under her maiden name. In 1911 she and Arthur BURGESS, whom she had met in St Ives in her summer student days, were married in Shrewsbury, and continued to keep up with the Cornish circle of friends they had made. They had one daughter. Both later joined STISA. Her husband pre-deceased her in 1957.
The correspondence between Coldwell and Burgess during their separations before marriage, provide vivid pictures of student life in St Ives, which Tovey brings to publication in his social history of the colony (2009). Her photo appears on p239, together with one of her future husband, Arthur Burgess.
Born 1810 in London, he married Elizabeth Vicat in 1831. He began by painting several large canvas advertisements for a travelling circus, and then spent some time in the Netherlands studying the Dutch Masters. In 1838 he moved to Portsmouth, where he painted mainly animals. In 1845 his Don Quixote and Sancho Panza with Rosinante in Don Pedro's Hut attracted much attention at The British Institution, which was established as a rival to the Royal Academy. He moved back to London in 1852 or 1853.
Inspired by the works of the 17th century Dutch Masters, and after a varied early career as a portraitist and animal painter, Cole established himself as a prolific and popular painter of the English pastoral. He became particularly associated with the landscape of Hampshire, Surrey, Cornwall, Wales, Sussex etc. By the 1870's he had reached the apogee of his artistic career, enjoying great success and prosperity until his death on 7 September 1883.
He was the father of landscapist George Vicat COLE (1833-1893) ARA, RA, with whose works his are sometimes confused, and Miss B Vicat COLE, possibly a granddaughter of George and Elizabeth, is noticed as an artist in Fowey, Cornwall, in the Year's Art editions from 1902-1911.
Sally Cole was born on the Isle of Wight. During her childhood the family moved to London, and Sally became a student at Falmouth Art School in 1972. Five years later she settled in Helston.
Her work has been exhibited widely in Cornwall and beyond.
The sending-in address for this artist between 1902 and 1911 was consistently given as Fowey, Cornwall, in The Year's Art. Wood presumes that this is a daughter of George Vicat COLE (1833-1893), and therefore a granddaughter of George COLE (1810-1883).
Daniel Cole paints figurative and semi-abstract landscapes of Cornwall and Norfolk. He is a member of the Society of Wildlife Artists and his work reflects his concern for the natural world, especially birds.
[The following is an updated entry from that of William Colenso (Wiremu) employed in Hardie (2009) Artists in Newlyn and West Cornwall, in which the wrong person (by the same name) was identified. These two William Colensos were cousins and brothers-in-law.]
Known primarily for his public service to the Penzance community in a wide variety of ways, including his election as Mayor in 1901, Colenso also had a flair for, and interest in, art and art education. Not only an Oddfellow for 70 years in the Order, but also a Freemason, he was one of the first to join the Volunteer Corps when it began in 1859, being a crack shot.
Decorating was the family business, and he went into the company with his father but taking a more artistic path, by pursuing art lessons at the Penzance School of Art (Phil Whiting being the Head Teacher). William Jr was the winner in 1864 of a Victoria Bronze Medal, in the examinations offered by the Art Department of the South Kensington Schools, for his drawings of plants. These exams were administered locally at the Penzance School of Art where he studied. Though he never pursued art as a career, he was later to become the Hon Secretary of the local Art School for many years – until it passed into the control of the town’s Corporation. Even then, however, he remained on the Management Committee. He exhibited from time to time in the amateur sections of the RCPS annual exhibitions.
He served in a similar capacity to the local Science Schools. Colenso was a governor of not only of the Art School when he died, but had been a governor of the Camborne School of Mines for over 30 years, and a Committee Member of the Penzance Hospital. Serving not only as member and President of the Royal Cornwall Geological Society, he also belonged to the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society. Married in 1872, his wife predeceased him after 52 years of marriage, and he was survived by two sons and two daughters. The family home was in Chapel Street, in a beautiful Georgian period house, now vacated by an Indian Cuisine restaurant and waiting for its next incarnation.
Mary Tustain (nee Collett) was born in Banstead, Surrey, and after leaving school went to Wimbledon School of Art and obtained the NDD in painting. The Principal, Gerald Cooper, recommended her for a position as assistant to JOHN ARMSTRONG RA for a commission for a painted ceiling in Bristol Council Chamber.
The work was carried out in Newlyn at the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery, beginning in June 1954, and was completed and installed in Bristol a year later.
She has subsequently lived and painted in North Yorkshire and Hertfordshire and has exhibited work at the RA Summer Exhibition and various other galleries in the UK.
Plymouth-born landscape painter in oils, exhibiting views of Scotland, Wales, Devon and Cornwall, he is noted in Census Returns as living at Rezare, Lezant (St Breock), near Launceston, with his wife Eliza, and daughters Lilian and Amy COLLIER. His painting of Trebarwith near Tintagel is presently in Birmingham Art Gallery.
During her childhood in Wanganui, New Zealand, Edith became an accomplished cellist and played chamber music in a quartet in which her father led as violinist. Her mother gave her lessons in watercolour, in which she excelled. After leaving school she attended Wanganui Technical School to further her studies in art. Encouraged by the artist Herbert BABBAGE to study abroad, she came to Europe in 1912, studying art in London and in Ireland. She made a good friend of the Australian artist Margaret Macpherson, whose encouragement gave Edith the confidence to exhibit at the SWA.
She remained in England during WWI because her brothers and cousins were fighting in Europe, and she felt the need to be available to help them with money, mail and hospitality when required. In 1920/21 she attended classes in St Ives with Frances HODGKINS, a fellow New Zealander, who felt that she showed tremendous potential. On the strength of this, Hodgkins invited Edith to accompany her on a painting trip to France. Unfortunately Edith's parents, who had supported her financially while abroad, withheld their permission, insisted that she come home after such a long absence.
After she returned to New Zealand she gave up serious painting to concentrate on personal and family matters. As the eldest of nine children (and an unmarried daughter) she was expected to dedicate herself to the care of her ageing parents. She was poorly treated by her father who burned many of her paintings (of the nude). Edith's modernist work was way ahead of its time and was negatively received by her community. Without the stimulus of a supportive artistic network, she lost confidence and focussed instead on her role as a devoted aunt to a growing number of nieces and nephews (37 in total).
She was chosen to represent New Zealand at the Empire Artists' Exhibition in London in 1937. Retrospective exhibitions of her work were held in New Zealand (including works painted there) in 1927 and 1955. On her death in 1964 in Wanganui, many of the younger generation of her family had no idea she had been an artist.
Daughter of Arthur Bevan COLLIER, born in Scotland and living at Lezant, Cornwall in 1881 (Census). Wood gives this as Callington, Cornwall in 1874, when she exhibited a picture of a dead magpie at SS. In 1881 she exhibited at the Society of Women Artists (according to Johnson & Greutzner), and Whybrow notices her presence in St Ives during the 1883-1900 period.
In 1892 B C Collier countersigned a suggestion with several other artists concerning the lodging place of the Arts Club book of addresses for 'models' (Tovey 2009), and Whybrow had noted his presence in her 1883-1900 list. The figure painter's addresses had been consecutively in London (1880) and Canterbury (1887). This entry, therefore, extends his biography by some years that may have been spent, at least partly, in Cornwall.
He was the son of Thomas Frederick COLLIER (fl1850-1874) who was also a landscape and still-life painter and a sometime teacher at the Cork School of Design.
Phil Collier's paintings evoke the essence of Cornwall in its natural beauty.
Collings began his art studies at the Redruth School of Art in 1965, following this with a diploma from the Berkshire College of Education. He lives in Newlyn and is a member of the NSA, with whom he exhibits.
Collins works from the artist studios at Trewidden Gardens, Buryas Bridge to the west of Penzance. Her starting point is the landscape of Penwith, but her work in oils and mixed-media paintings is non-figurative. She and her partner Peter WRAY RE, have considerable national and international reputations as leading printmakers. They paint both collaboratively and separately.
A former Director of Studies in Figure and Painting at South Kensington Schools, who exhibited from 1854 until 1890 at the RA and elsewhere widely, he was vocal in his opposition to the placing of the National Gallery of British Art at the Millbank Prison site.
His connection in Cornwall was with Falmouth, where he also painted.
The artist was born in Hammersmith, London, the eldest son of Fine Arts dealer Lebbluv Colls and his wife Sarah Ann. He continued to live at Barnes with his family until at least 1905, by which time his mother Sarah had been widowed. The address there was 9 Castlenau Villas.
He may also have maintained a studio at 44 Piccadilly, London from 1886 (Brook-Hart).
His work Carbis Bay, Cornwall was shown at the Institute of Painters in Oil Colours (ROI) in 1884-5, and Off Penzance was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, London in 1885. In 1888 he showed A grey day - Penzance (RA No 910) and in the following year Mounts Bay, Cornwall (RA No 944) both at the RA. In 1902, he continued to exhibit from London, but as late as 1908 was exhibiting Fishing Boats at Penzance at the RA.
Ithell was born in 1906 in Assam, India. At the age of one she was sent to stay with relatives in England, and never returned to the country of her birth. Her parents' Scottish and Irish ancestry engendered an interest in Celticism, and her early education was provided by tutors and nannies until she attended Cheltenham Ladies College from 1919 to 1925. She became interested in occultism at the age of 17. Although she studied at the Slade School of Art (1927-1931) she was basically self-taught as an artist. In 1931 her 'Judith Showing the Head of Holofernes' was exhibited at the Royal Academy. The 1936 International Surrealist exhibition in London confirmed her interest in Surrealism.
An early disciple of Dada, she met Salvador DALI and studied the twilight world of dreams. For a time she lived in Paris and Athens, where she met Andre BRETON in 1939. She joined the Surrealist group in England later that year and contributed many texts to its journal London Bulletin. She broke with the group after a dispute with ELT MESENS regarding her occult preoccupations. A devoted explorer of decalcomania, fumage, frottage, collage and other forms of pictorial automatism, she invented several magic-inspired techniques of her own.
Two years later she joined Toni Del Renzio and a short-lived dissident ferment around the magazine Arson. In 1943 she and Del Renzio were married. After their divorce in 1947 Ithell settled in Cornwall. Her book, The Living Stones (1957) records her arrival in Lamorna and describes her fascination with the local landscape and Celtic mythology. After an extensive search, Ithell rented 'Vow Cave Studio', close by the stream at the top of the road leading down to Lamorna Cove. Essentially this was a shack with no electricity or running water and here she felt completely in accord with the natural environment which surrounded her. But eventually she found that the Cove was becoming too popular with visitors in the summer, so in 1959 she moved to a cottage in Paul, which she named 'Stonecross Cottage'.
In 1960 she published a gothic occult novel entitled Goose of Hermogenes. Embodying the timeless energy and spirit of the relentless search for esoteric knowledge, she pursued interests in alchemy, Celtic lore, occult and mythology - also the world of fantasy and the surreal.
Her paintings of flowers and plants indicate awareness of the super-real in everyday reality. The flowers, executed with technical brilliance, convey the mystical nature of their beauty, and the plant forms have an element of uncompromising truth. She later produced the Fanatasmagie novel.
Michael Canney commented '...Regrettably she did not really become involved with NAG until the surrealist movement was in decline, but she continued to produce works that could only be described as 'surreal' and exhibited them at the Gallery.'
Ithell Colquhoun lived in Paul until her final days in a nursing home in Lamorna. She requested that her ashes be scattered on the rocks at the Cove. After her death, her occult work was left to the Tate, but the bulk of her artwork, around 5000 pieces, was held by the National Trust until 2019, when it, too, was acquired by the Tate. She died in relative obscurity but her written and visual works, with their focus on the occult and esoteric feminism, have in recent years attracted renewed critical acclaim.
An American by birth, this artist made a colour woodcut entitled Cornwall Coast, now in the collection of the California State Library [Acc L392.1966]. Her association locally is as yet unrecorded.
Launceston Castle was painted in 2001 by this artist using oil & mixed media on paper. The painting is in the charge of Launceston Town Council.
Hilary Comeau was of French Canadian stock, but spent most of his life in England. A prizewinner at the Slade, he was noted for his meticulous drawings of thistles and shells. He was the first fulltime art teacher at Denstone College, Staffordshire, and later taught at the Girls' High School in Truro.
His first visit to Cornwall was to a holiday cottage in Boscastle. Later he settled in Truro.