Born at Banstead, Surrey in 1877, Annie was the second daughter of Paul Bradshaw Fearon and his wife Edith Jane, nee Duffield, and the older sister of Hilda FEARON, born the following year. [The incorrect date of 1888 is sometimes found for Annie, but this was probably her baptismal date when she and the other children were baptised all together at a later date.* See Misc] Her father was a wine merchant in the West End of London and the family today would be described as well-to-do, the family's four girls and their brother being looked after by five residential servants.
Annie and Hilda were not only close in age but appeared to have had a close relationship throughout their lives. Annie's early education was at the Cheltenham Ladies College, where her artistic leanings were first discovered. She went on to study art at the Chelsea and London Schools of Art. During these years she studied under Sir William Nicholson (1872-1940), Augustus JOHN (1878-1961) and Sir William Orpen (1878-1931). Meantime Hilda attended the Slade, and the two travelled to Dresden for further studies. Annie's interest at that stage was music and the pianoforte, while Hilda pursued art training.
Annie is said to have decided to follow Hilda to St Ives (c1902-4) in order to continue her training as an artist. Hilda is first recorded in St Ives during August 1900, initially living at 'The Cabin' and studying under Algernon and Gertrude Talmage. Annie met her future husband, the Rev Bernard WALKE (1874-1941), who was then a curate in St Ives. In 1904 'Ber' Walke (as he was known), a popular and evangelical high churchman, whose father before him had also been an Anglican priest in West Cornwall, moved on to a curacy in Polruan. Before their marriage, and perhaps about the same time as her sister Hilda left St Ives to move to London, Annie also moved to Polruan and established a studio in a sail loft overlooking the harbour.
The couple married in London in 1911, she approximately 34, and he at the age of 37, during his curacy at Polruan by Fowey. Two years later he became Vicar of St Hilary, near Marazion, immortalised in his autobiography, Twenty Years at St Hilary (1935), one of the books often referred to when researching artists in Cornwall. Walke invited Annie and a number of friends to decorate parts of the church interior, and these included Ernest PROCTER, Dod PROCTER, Roger Fry and Pog YGLESIAS among others. They had no children.
The two had many friends amongst the artists both in London and West Cornwall, and were introduced especially to the Lamorna crowd by Alfred James MUNNINGS. Laura KNIGHT described them, 'They were both long and thin, and Ber always wore dandy silk socks - he was not in the least like a parson to look at. A man with ideals that he lived up to-he was big - hearted enough to understand anyone and had it in him to enjoy vulgar fun as much as any. After we became intimate we often went to stay with the Walkes at St Hilary, as simple as any monastery in its furnishings.' Christopher Garrett, who has extensively researched the pair for a set of articles for the centennial of the time when the Walkes were resident in Polruan, has provided this material to the CAI, for research and study purposes. It includes a bibliography of her paintings, and writings, and family details of friendships with literary figures such as Walter de la Mare, and George Bernard Shaw.
The Walkes moved from St Hilary on retirement to The Battery, Mevagissey, and Ber died 25 June, 1941. She lived on alone at Battery House until shortly before she died. She rarely painted after 1950 but wrote poetry that was published in 1963. She died in 1965 aged 88, and is buried in St Erth Cemetery, near St Hilary and Lelant. Bernard was buried 25 years earlier in the cemetery at Lelant Church.
Further information on Annie Walke can be found at https://issue-2.materiajournal.com/pellini_vesaluoma/ - an article entitled 'Richness of Colour and Boldness of Outline: on Annie Walke's Artistic Practice', published in 2022 in the online journal Materia - Journal of Technical Art History.
The husband of the artist Annie WALKE (nee Fearon), Bernard Walke merits his own entry in this Index, being closely associated with the artists in west Cornwall working alongside his wife during the first part of the twentieth century. What follows is a revision (2014) of an article by Christopher 'Gus' Garrett (2006-11) entitled 'Bernard Walke and Polruan', which was originally published in the Lanteglos Parish News 2006-7).
The years 2004 to 2013 were the centenary of the period Bernard Walke lived and ministered in Polrun in the parish of Lanteglos-by-Fowey. Why is he still remembered and revered when many of his contemporaries throughout Cornwall have been long forgotten? One clue is that his friend in later life, Frank Baker, said Bernard Walke was 'a good man who could never be dull'.
Bernard Walke was the eldest of three sons born to Rev Nicholas Walke (1833-1899) and Eliza Anna Coope who had married on 1 September 1869 at Clifton, Bristol. According to the record of his birth at the General Register Office (GRO) he was born on 15 June 1874 at Redlynch, Wiltshire, although others have given the date as 14 June. Rather strangely his birth was registered about a month later just as 'boy' with no name stated (just over a year later the birth of his next younger brother, William Coope Walke, was recorded similarly). He was subsequently christened Nicolo Bernard Walke, his first Christian name 'Nicolo' being the name by which his father Nicholas was always known.
Because of his birth in Wiltshire and his subsequent training in the south-east followed by his first appointment in London, there is a tendency to think of him as an 'up-country' person. This time of his life was the anomaly, his parents' roots being firmly in Devon and Cornwall. Bernard Walke's father 'Nicolo' was born at Kingston in South Devon, and prior to his marriage had been curate at St Peters in Plymouth, Carmenellis in West Cornwall and St Charles the Martyr in Falmouth. It was presumably through this latter appointment that Bernard Walke's parents met: Eliza Anna's father, William John Coope, was rector of Falmouth from 1838 to 1870 and lived at Gyllyngdune House, Falmouth, which had been built by his father, General William Jesser Coope. [The Rev. William John Coope was the first Anglo-Catholic priest in Cornwall].
After being educated at home in the Vicarage of Redlynch Church, Lover near Salisbury on the edge of the New Forest, Bernard Walke attended Chichester Theological College. He began his ministry as a curate at St Michael and All Angels in Walthamstow, a large Anglo-Catholic church, under Father Ernest Blaxland Clarabut MA, who later became Rector of Blisland, Cornwall from 1913 to 1935.
In 1902 Bernard Walke became Curate at St Ives, Cornwall: at that date St Ives only had the Parish Church and a Mission Room, St Nicholas' Mariners' Church not being opened until 1905. One feature of Bernard Walke's ministry there was taking the service out of the church to the people, for example on the quay, and another feature was leading processions through the streets. [Such events were recorded by the artist W H Y Titcomb in his paintings 'A Pilot' and 'The Church in Cornwall: A Rogation Day Procession' respectively, the former depicting Bernard Walke as the preacher].
He left St Ives during 1904 after being removed from his duties by the Bishop of Truro, essentially because he and the Vicar agreed that they could not work together. His leaving was much to the dismay of many parishioners, from fishermen to artists, and the subject of a memorandum from them to the Bishop of Truro which was full of praise for his qualities and achievements there. Essentially he had achieved precisely what the Church had found very difficult in the preceding fifty years, namely to make the church attractive to 'the working classes' and particularly to those for whom religion had not played any major part in their lives previously.
St Ives' loss however was Polruan's gain: a vacancy for a curate at Polruan arose and Bernard Walke was appointed to it. Whilst John Trounsel Mugford was the Vicar of Lanteglos the Mission Church or Chapel of Ease of St Saviours had been built in Polruan to seat 350 people; the first service being Matins on 22 October 1891. Mugford left the parish in 1902 and in 1903 Charles Francis Trusted became the new Vicar. It appears that he and Bernard Walke developed an agreeable partnership dividing the responsibilities of the parish and its two churches, Trusted concentrating principally on Lanteglos Parish Church, including its restoration, and the country parts of the parish whilst Bernard Walke concentrated his efforts on St Saviours and the people of Polruan. From reports it would appear that Bernard Walke continued in Polruan as he had done in St Ives, with outdoor services and processions, and with similar effect on increasing the church's congregation. During his period in Polruan a daily mass became the norm and it appears that the church was always full for services, particularly on Sundays.
On 6 September 1911 Bernard Walke married Annie Fearon at St John the Baptist Church, Marlborough Street, London. It appears likely he and Annie had first met in St Ives, presumably through her sister Hilda. [Hilda had come to Cornwall earlier, during 1900, and was in St Ives continuing her art studies under Algernon Talmage.] Henceforth she became known and addressed as 'Annie Walke' by everyone including her husband. Prior to marriage Bernard Walke is understood to have lived in a number of locations in the village, including 'Hill House'. After marriage he and Annie Walke lived at Number 1 Fore Street, Polruan over 'The Corner Shop' which is now 'Crumpets'. Interestingly on the GRO record of their marriage in London he gave his address just as '2 West Street', the inference is a London address but it appears to be more likely a Polruan address!
Their life in Polruan and his ministry here unfortunately came to an end only a year or so later when Rev. Trusted left the parish. However fortunately Bernard Walke was immediately offered the living of St Hilary near Marazion where he remained from 1913 until his retirement in 1936, this period of his life being vividly described in his autobiography 'Twenty Years at St Hilary'. Whilst there he became well known nationally during the mid-1920s to mid-1930s as a result of writing and directing a number of Nativity plays, most notably 'Bethlehem' which were broadcast live nationally from St Hilary in the early days of 'the wireless'. But that is another story, another chapter in the life of this remarkable and fascinating man.
Born Mirfield, Yorks, Alec Walker's first contact with Newlyn came about under the most romantic circumstances. Already established in Yorkshire as the manufacturer of Vigil silk, he advertised in 1912 for a poster and advertising designer. Kathleen EARLE ('Kay') replied and arranged to meet him in London with a portfolio of her work. Kay had been a student at the Stanhope FORBES School of Painting in Newlyn since 1910, and had already received commissions for illustration and poster work.
Alec was so impressed by her account of the lively Newlyn art colony that he travelled back to Cornwall with her the same day to see for himself. He was welcomed into their midst, immediately felt at home, and started sketching, encouraged by Ernest PROCTER and Harold HARVEY. He was appointed Yorkshire representative of the Federation of British Industry by Sir Charles Mandelberg, and in the 1914-18 War was exempted from war service to help run the family business in Yorkshire producing cloth for service uniforms.
In 1918 he married Kay and bought Myrtle Cottage in Newlyn, and in 1919 bought 'Sambo's Row' to convert to a textile works, importing plant and machinery from Yorkshire. Local labour was taken on, and in 1920 CRYSEDE was founded. From the Yorkshire works, now run by his brother Gerald, Vigil silk printed the designs and the garments were made up at Newlyn. In 1921 he became involved with Group X, a Vorticist revival. In 1923 he visited Paris and met Dufy and Zadkine who encouraged him to create his own designs, which were very successful.
He opened a retail shop at New Road, Newlyn, having 3,000 mail-order clients and customers in Paris, America and Australia. His fabrics gained a national reputation, and he invited Tom HERON to join Cryséde as manager. Larger premises were leased at St Ives, and the firm was transferred by Heron from Newlyn with Walker's agreement. In 1926 Cryséde became a Limited Company. Production increased, and further retail shops opened under Heron's direction; Walker continued to produce designs from his Newlyn studio. In 1929 there was a final breakdown of marriage. He also had a dispute with the Cryséde Board, suffered a nervous breakdown, and dismissed Tom Heron and other key members of staff. He was then dismissed by the Board on health grounds and had no contact with Cryséde for three years, spending much of his time hunting at Dulverton, Somerset. In 1931 he continued with his painting, submitting work to the RA. In 1933 he returned briefly to Cryséde as General Manager and produced some designs at the request of the Board. Between 1933-39 he retired from Cryséde, re-married, bought a farm in Yorkshire, bred horses and began collecting pictures. He returned to Cornwall, painting in watercolour and oils, and in 1950 moved to Falmouth, where he continued painting and collecting pictures.
Rod Walker has been a long-time member of the NSA, and is a painter of great vitality and strength.
His work, Trewidden Night, is mentioned in the Ruhrmund review of the 2011 NSA show, 'Uncharted Landscapes'. (Aug-Sept at the Mariners' Chapel Gallery, St Ives). His work has also been exhibited at the Rainyday Gallery, Penzance.
Born in Welling, Kent, Roy Walker trained in art at the Gravesend School of Art and Regent Street Polytechnic during the early 1950s. Following National Service in the RAF, he attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1957-1960.
In 1965 he and his wife, Peggie, moved to St Ives, where he joined the Penwith Society of Arts, the Newlyn Society of Artists, and the Plymouth Society of Artists. From 1972 he was director of the print workshop at the Penwith Gallery, and had his first solo show at the Camel Gallery, Wadebridge the following year. With the Porthmeor Printmakers he exhibited at the Tate Gallery, St Ives in 1993. In the interim years he was a visiting lecturer at the Falmouth College of Art, Plymouth College of Art & Design, and exhibited abroad in the USA, and held workshops for international groups visiting St Ives. He exhibited widely in many group and solo shows.
Roy had an impressive reputation both as a painter and printmaker, and was known for his warm, generous nature. A close friend of the artist Bryan PEARCE, he helped to produce prints for him, and also John WELLS. He was continually experimenting with different media, later in life producing work on a scale which exceeded in size the confines of his studio. However the theme of flight (integral to his art practice since his RAF days) was always evident in his work, together with his love of form, colour and light.
He died of cancer in 2001, aged 65. A memorial exhibition was held at the Penhaven & Belgrave Galleries, St Ives, in 2003. In 2011 a retrospective exhibition entitled 'Roy Walker Ten' took place at the Cafe Art, The Drill Hall, St Ives.
The artist graduated from Falmouth College of Arts (then School of Art) in 1992.
'Walker is a highly regarded artist for his mature and sensitive portraits. He has won awards at the Discerning Eye, The Hunting Art Prizes and the Holburne Portrait Prize (2004). He has exhibited at the NPG and has recently been made an Associate member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.' (Open Studios Catalogue)
In 2005 he painted the portrait of St Ives artist Bryan PEARCE, which was given to the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro as part of the Bryan Pearce Bequest (collection).
Walker teaches the three-day Figure Painting course at the Newlyn School of Art in Chywoone Hill, Newlyn. He is also a tutor on the weekly Life Drawing evening sessions held at the School.
Nicky Walker spent many years living on Dartmoor, then moved just over the border into Cornwall. She also spends time on the Isles of Scilly.
Caroline Walker studied in Wales and worked in the fashion business in London before moving to Cornwall. A painter of animals, she is adept at capturing the individual personality of her subjects.
Born in London and worked initially as a glass blower.
In 1959, during Wall's final years in St Ives, he produced a small scale sculpture, Standing Figure, that came back on to the market at the Paisnel Gallery in 2009 (cat no 27, illus). This was created at the same time as he was acting as an assistant to Barbara HEPWORTH, and demonstrates his constructivist mode of formal work.
Eloise Wall works from her home studio in Port Navas. Cornish seascapes and dreamscapes form the main focus of her work.
George Wallace was born in Dublin but trained under Paul FEILER at the West of England College of Art in Bristol. From 1949 to 1957 he taught painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture at Falmouth School of Art. He lived initially in Penryn, then Falmouth, painting abstract landscapes inspired by the St Austell clay pits. This theme was to remain an inspiration throughout his career. Around 1955 Wallace attended Falmouth Polytechnic in order to learn to weld.
In 1957 he emigrated to Canada, embarking on a career as a teacher of art at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His works in a variety of media were exhibited widely, and he developed a reputation as a sculptor of significance. He retired to British Columbia in 1985 and died in 2009 at the age of 89.
Headmaster of the School of Art at Redruth (founded 1873) located on Clinton Road.
Primitive painter, born in Devon in August 1855, moved soon to St Ives in Cornwall, where he lived and died. Worked as a fisherman for most of his life, then owned the marine stores on the harbour at St Ives. He took up painting as an old man of 70 after the death of his wife in 1925, in his own words "for company".
For three years he worked alone making pictures of ships, lighthouses and the sea with materials he found around him; marine paint, backs of washing powder packets, flotsam, etc. In 1928 he was discovered by Ben NICHOLSON and Christopher WOOD as they strolled by his house on a Sunday afternoon. They immediately realised the importance of this untrained talent, who had no knowledge or interest in the history of art. Throughout the thirties he was incorporated in exhibitions in London, where Nicholson acted as agent.
But it was really after his death, in poverty and in the work house at Madron, that he was accepted by the art world at large. Alethea GARSTIN was the kind friend who took paints and paper to him when he was incarcerated in the work house. Now his work is held in many public collections, primarily the Tate Gallery, St Ives, and Kettle's Yard, Cambridge. Though utterly primitive and childlike in style, there is a certain sophistication to his work. His ships are delineated with the utmost attention to detail, and his seas are bursting with the energy that is so hard to capture in paint.
Herbert Read (Art Now, 1933) called him 'An old man who still has the eyes of a child'. Adrian STOKES explained: 'He has been a fisherman all his life, accustomed to conceive the sea in relation to what lies beneath it, sand or rock and the living forms of fish. The surface of his sea, seen best on grey days, is the showing also of what lies under it.' (Colour and Form, 1937, p64)
Amanda Walsh spent her early years in Goring-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. She studied law at university, subsequently working in finance.
In 2020 she moved to St Ives, where she worked at the School of Painting. In 2022 she was appointed as gallery manager of the St Ives Society of Artists.
A self-taught painter, she has exhibited her work in galleries in Oxfordshire and Devon, and currently sells paintings in the Sloop in St Ives.
She first exhibited at the RA in 1907 when she was living in Walton-on-Thames, and by 1924 was working from 11 Avenue Studios in the Fulham Road. She moved to St Ives just before WWII working from 2 Porthmeor Studios in both charcoals and paints. Each Show Day her charcoal portrait studies were well-received.
Peter Walsh has exhibited his ceramics at Toe in the Water Gallery, Lostwithiel.
Walsh was born in Worcester. In 1992 she obtained a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art from De Montfort University in Leicester. She subsequently spent several years teaching art in London, before moving to Cornwall in 2011, taking studio space at Krowji, The Old Grammar School, Redruth. Graduating with a Distinction from the MA Fine Art: Contemporary Practice course at Falmouth University in 2013, where she was recipient of the Sandra Blow award, she moved into working with digital video installation. She is an active member of the CMR Gallery in Redruth and exhibits regularly.
Juliet Walshe was born in Hertford, Hertfordshire. Her foundation course was at St Alban's College of Art and Design which she completed in 1987. In 1991 she graduated from the Slade School with a BA in Fine Art.
After a 20 year administrative career, she has moved to Falmouth, where she is currently attending the MA Fine Art: Contemporary Practice course at Falmouth College of Art. (2012)
All of the paintings and prints shown in her March (2012) exhibition in the Third Room of the New Street Gallery, Penzance, were of beaches in and near Falmouth, Penryn, the Fal and Helford Estuary. Also of South Cornwall subjects included the coastal stretches between Helston, Loe Bar, Porthleven and Penzance.
Sam Walshe was the founder of the 'Neo-Deco' style. The motifs in his paintings were derived from his concern for the environment, in particular the oceans and endangered species. He depicted the fringes of our world with his unique stylization and dramatic sense of colour. He regarded his paintings as his main form of communication and loved "the collusion between people and the environment".
Born in Liverpool, Walshe settled in Cornwall in the 1960's, becoming a founder member of the emerging surf scene. He was an intensely private and unpretentious artist, who allowed his work to reveal his life and mind.
His work has been exhibited at the Driftwood galleries in Falmouth, Truro and Padstow.
Sam Walshe died in July 2021.
Listed as based in Liverpool (1908), Birkdale, Lancashire (1917) and St Ives (1923), this artist exhibited three etchings at the New Print Society Exhibition (for etchers, printers, litho and woodcut artists) in April 1923.
Work by this artist is included in the art collection of University College Falmouth (UCF).
Maggy Walters' work represents an exploration of our physical and spiritual relationship to landscape. She draws on the teachings of Jung to capture a sense of both inner and outer worlds.
Sonya moved to Cornwall from London in 1989. She works as a painter and printmaker from her studio in St Ives.
Kate Walters works from a studio in Newlyn. Her work has been exhibited at the Rainyday Gallery and at the Exchange, both in Penzance.
She is a tutor at Newlyn School of Art (2016).