Derek Melotte's paintings are abstract representations of structure and colour derived from natural forms.
Menpes was born in Australia, and became a pupil and follower of Whistler as well as a mentor and colleague of Elizabeth Armstrong (later to become Mrs Elizabeth FORBES).
He painted market and street scenes in various countries, and illustrated numerous travel books, the texts for which were written by his daughter Dorothy. In 1882 he gave lessons in etching to Elizabeth ARMSTRONG in Pont Aven, and then visited St Ives with Walter Richard SICKERT and James Abbot McNeil WHISTLER during their famed stay in 1883-84. It may partly have been due to their encouragement that Elizabeth Armstrong decided to give West Cornwall a try. Her preference was for St Ives - and she did work there - which was always more cosmopolitan and international than Newlyn.
Painter, watercolourist and etcher, Menpes' subjects and palette were much influenced by Whistler and the Japanese style. It is thanks to him that such a complete record and collection of the etchings of Elizabeth Forbes was made. Menpes valued them highly, and believed in her talent for the techniques involved - which Stanhope FORBES later discouraged (possibly because of the Menpes' Whistler-Sickert associations, of which he did not approve).
Menpes published World Pictures, being a record in colour (300 illustrations, 50 in full colour of people and scenes in twenty-one countries), with text by Dorothy Menpes. He died in Pangbourne, Sussex.
Laura Menzies studied at Birmingham University, where she graduated with a BA in Performing & Visual Arts before gaining an MA in Fine Art from Falmouth University. She is also an art teacher and educator, having taught at Falmouth University, St Ives School of Painting and the Eden Project. Her work has been widely exhibited in the UK (Tate Modern, Tate St Ives and Penwith Gallery) and internationally. She says: 'My lyrical, abstract paintings are like visual poems, spoken through constructs of memories, emotions and indirect references to place. These influences are not overt but are located on the edge of consciousness, gradually seeping in as the work evolves.'
Frederick Mercer was born in Birmingham. By the time of the 1871 Census, he was working as a photographer, while still living with his parents and five surviving siblings in Fordrough Street, Birmingham. He had also been taking painting lessons and began exhibiting that year at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.
His extensive travels took him to Cornwall, and he is likely to have first visited Polperro in the 1870s.
After his marriage to Elizabeth Alice Tompson (1850-1927) he moved from Birmingham to Staffordshire.
Jack Merriott was born in Greenwich. He was an artist, author, poster designer, illustrator and teacher, who became particularly well known for the artworks he produced for British Railways and the General Post Office. He studied at Croydon and St Martin's Schools of Art, and began his working life as a shipping clerk in an office near London Bridge. Jack spent all his leisure time painting, and from 1930 had several works exhibited in the Royal Academy. In 1932 he married Hilda May Bridger, at Addiscombe, Surrey and by 1935 the couple were living in Shirley, on the outskirts of Croydon. During the 1930s he was a member of Croydon Art Society and had works accepted at the RI and ROI. However, in the National Register in 1939, he still described himself as head shipping clerk. It was not clear what he did during World War II but alongside his painting practice, he was an instructor in 1945-6 in the Royal Army Education Corps.
Merriott's illustrations often appeared in 'Sphere' magazine. He produced many watercolours for 'Beautiful Britain', a series of books published by Blackie. In addition to his work as a commercial artist, Merriott was active as a fine artist and became highly regarded as a teacher of watercolour painting. Vice-president of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, and a regular contributor to the magazine 'The Artist', he travelled throughout Britain giving demonstrations of watercolour painting. He made instructional movies and hosted painting holidays in Britain and abroad. He also devised a correspondence course on watercolour painting for the Pitman College of Art. A versatile artist, his memberships included the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil Colour, the Royal Society of Marine Artists and the Pastel Society.
Merriott was official artist in Westminster Abbey for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.
He was a regular visitor to Polperro from 1950, and in 1952 he found his dream home there, buying and restoring a derelict cottage on the harbour. 'Island House' was a five-storey property, where he lived for the next fourteen years. By early 1953 he had joined STISA, and became President of both the East Cornwall Society of Artists in 1956, and of Plymouth Arts Club in 1962.
In 1966 he moved to Storrington, west Sussex. At the relatively early age of 67, Jack Merriott died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident. After his death, the Jack Merriott Memorial Trust was established, enabling some excellent examples of his work to be donated to Worthing Museum and Art Gallery and the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. His widow, Hilda, died in Plymouth in 2000, aged 90. They had no children.
He was one of the most successful Polperro artists, whose remarkable body of work was highly sought after during his lifetime, despite a decline in fashion for representational art.
The artist's painting of the Agar Robartes children hangs in the family home, Lanhydrock, near St Austell, Cornwall in the care of the National Trust.
Merritt was an American figure painter and etcher who first exhibited at the RA from 1871. She has the distinction of painting as a memorial to her husband and teacher/mentor Henry Merritt (1822-1877), the first painting by a woman artist to be acquired for the nation by the Trustees of the Chantry Bequest. It was Love Locked Out, exhibited at the RA in 1890. She won many awards and medals and was a part of the celebrity art circles with artists such as Frederic LEIGHTON, Lawrence ALMA-TADEMA and James WHISTLER, well-known to Cornish-based painters of the day. Though as yet not established for certain, she was probably known to Elizabeth Adela FORBES.
There is no evidence except for the painting mentioned above wherein she depicted the children of a Cornish family, that she actually had a Cornish connection. She died in Hurstbourne Tarrant, Hampshire, after some years of failing eyesight.
Margaret Merry grew up in Falmouth, beginning her art training at Falmouth School of Art. She subsequently obtained a diploma in Art & Design from Hornsey College of Art in London and gained her teaching qualifications at the University of Bristol. She lived in Truro for over thirty years, painting and writing.
She has lived in Spain since 2002. Her paintings have been exhibited in London, New York, Tokyo and Paris and have been bought by collectors world-wide.
Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, Merton was educated at Christ's College, and continued his art studies at the Canterbury College School of Art, working between London, England and New Zealand from 1905-10. During European visits, he spent extensive time in the Netherlands, Cornwall and Brittany. He attended sketching lessons taught by Frances Hodgkins in Concarneau, and while in France between 1910-13, he studied at the Academie Colarossi, and also with P Tudor-Hart.
Merton married the American artist Ruth Calvert Jenkins in 1914, and they had two sons (one born in France, the other in New York) before his wife died in 1921. He then travelled in France, and based himself again in England, where he later died after a long illness. His titles include St Ives, Barnoon Hill; St Ives and St Michael's Mount (all dated 1910).
A painter who with colleague John MITCHELL organised the opening event of the fourth annual Newlyn Arts Festival which was the Open Art Exhibition held at NAG (Nov 2010). Her own work was also selected for the show, A Bird's Eye View: Hell's Mouth, by the selector, Barrie COOK.
The artist was born into a Quaker family in Glastonbury, Somerset, and during his childhood in Bath, he was taught by Augustin Edouart (1796-1861), the best French exponent of silhouette profiles.
In 1834 he emigrated to New York, and worked assidiously in the main centres of Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and Saratoga Springs, becoming a naturalised American citizen. Family reference materials show that his charges for a full body profile were $1.75 and $1.50 for sitting profile, with children being half price. He was to produce thousands of these each year, moving from city to city. He signed his silhouettes as either S Metford or Sam'l Metford.
He had returned to England (1844) and was living at 6 North Parade, Penzance, as a lodger (aged 40) when the Census of 1851 was taken, sharing alongside one Guillaume Thomazie, a Professor of French and Italian from Vannes, France. By 1853 he had moved to Congresbury, Somerset to care for his blind father.
There are many examples of his work throughout the US and the UK, and especially in the South West of Britain. He embellished his work in gold, yellow-ochre or Chinese white [Peggy McClard ref]
The artist died at Weston super Mare.
Meuli began his full-time painting career in Cornwall in 1982, remaining here for six years. Now living in Glasgow, Scotland, where he has lived since 1996, a great many travels and achievements can be charted for this artist and art historian.
Born in Poole, Dorset, Jonathan attended Bryanston School, Cambridge (BA 1980), and the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, and throughout his life has drawn and painted, both figurative and abstract subjects which can only loosely described as landscape-townscapes. The depth of his work in colouration and style; the intelligence of his perspectives, are felt immediately in his powerful palette. His work is rooted in history and the today, in the best sense, and tells stories of the development of the urban, industrial and the post-industrial over the rural idyll. Realism and the strength of image are the keynotes of his work.
His book, Shadow House: Interpretations of Northwest Coast Art (2000) is a study of Native American art, based on his academic work for a PhD from the University of East Anglia (1996). He continues exhibiting in solo and mixed shows, primarily in Scotland.
The earliest pupil found by Iris Green to be accepted into the Forbes School of Painting in 1900, Meynell subsequently became a writer rather than a painter. Everard was one of the children of Alice and Wilfred Meynell, the former of which wrote illustrated articles about Newlyn and its artist colony in the Art Journal (see Hardie 2009 for reprints) of 1889.
Newlyn subjects depicted by this artist identified; Benezit notices a painter of marine subjects by this name, a Belgian by country of origin. No further information is currently available.
When Francis G WOOD (1915-19) was Headmaster of the Penzance School of Art, the educational policy instituted by the Town Council was to offer more vocational teaching. One example of this was a needlework class, led by Miss Michell.
Born on 22 May 1824 in Redruth, Cornwall, a Newlyn title is known for this artist dated 1877 (Bednar). He died on 30 October 1909, age 85, in London (GRO). No further information is currently available at present.
Chrissie is a well-established painter of coastal scenery, including coves and harbours with their colourful boats and dinghies. Born in Lincoln, she studied at Barnsley College of Art, subsequently graduating from Falmouth School of Art in 1986.
Having graduated from Cornwall College with a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Creative Practice, Fijke Middendorp currently works from Kwowji Studios in Redruth.
Frank Middleditch was born in Edmonton, Middlesex. He was educated at Stationers' Company's School in Hornsey, after which he won a scholarship to Hornsey College of Art. He trained as an industrial designer and was a member of the Society of Industrial Artists (MSIA).
From 1929 to 1932 he was in India, serving as a volunteer in the Calcutta Light Horse Regiment. During World War II he was in the Home Guard (as a private) from 1943 to 1944.
A radio he designed for Bush, while he worked for De La Rue, was in the 1946 'Britain Can Make It' exhibition at the V&A. The model, originally in black, became immensely popular and was then produced in several colours, as well as for the export market with translated words; a mahogany-coloured version is in the permanent collection of the V&A.
In 1935 he married a classically trained singer, Felise. During the 1950s they were living in Lympstone near Exmouth in Devon. Alongside Clifford FISHWICK and Amy ELTON, he became a member of the Kenn Group, a society of professional artists based in Exeter, whose group shows were usually held in the city's Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM).
In 1962 he and Felise moved to Cornwall and were living at Fenton Pits, outside Bodmin, and sometime after 1973 they moved to Egloshayle, Wadebridge. In 1963 Frank had a solo show of paintings at the Poly, Falmouth, and a solo show of engraved slate, collages and drawings in the RAMM in 1971. During a long artistic career, his work was also shown at the New English Art Club, Royal Academy, Royal West of England Academy, Birmingham City Gallery and Brighton City Gallery.
He died in Truro in 1996.
After studying at Scarborough College of Art and Exeter College of Art, Jon taught pottery for three years at a Residential school in Devon before finally settling in Lelant, near St Ives. His design ideas for pots are realised through a programme of meditation on the 'Tree of Life', his themes the embodiment of images and symbols arising from this approach; he works intensely for a period of weeks, writing and drawing, to make the ideas come to life. He believes strongly in the importance of design, and is inspired by diverse cultural influences ranging from the Incas through Egyptian hieroglyphs to Native American art, using a variety of metal lustres, gold, platinum and copper with various combinations of lustre glazes and semi-precious stones. All his pots need several firings to bring the layers of lustre to full strength and realise the idea to the detail.
Marilyn Middlemiss obtained an Honours degree from St Albans School of Art in 1992. This was followed by an MA in Contemporary Visual Arts at Falmouth College of Art. She has studied, lived and worked in Cornwall since the late 1990s.
She created the Salt Gallery, Hayle, and then the Salt Gallery Cornwall online: www.saltgallerycornwall.co.uk.
Lucy Middleton is a member of Art Space Gallery, a co-operative group based in St Ives.
Alan James Middleton was born in Coventry in 1926, the son of the Cornish born artist, James Charles MIDDLETON. He trained as an architect with the Architectural Association School. He exhibited at RA, RWS, RBA, and PS. He died in 1998.
A small group of his works and by his father from his estate were sold by W H Lane & Son in April 2001.
J C Middleton was born at Redruth on 7th May 1894, the son of a commercial clerk. By 1911 he is recorded as a 16 year old art student studying at Redruth School of Art (1910-15) under Phil Whiting. He later studied at Birmingham School of Art (1920-25) and at Royal College of Art. In 1920 he married Gladys Goldsworthy at Kings Norton RD and they lived for a time at Coventry where their son A J MIDDLETON was born in 1926.
He later lived at Wallington, Surrey and became a member of both the Wapping Group of Artists and the Langham Sketching Club. He exhibited between 1933 and 1938 at RA, ROI, RI, SMA and with other local groups. He died in the Sutton - Wallington area in 1969.