The artist was born in Heaton Norris near Stockport, Cheshire, leaving school at fourteen to become an apprentice decorator. After Army service in WWII, he studied painting at Stockport College in the evenings until about 1948, and for some years painted ordinary street scenes and entertainments in bright colours, depicting the lives of working men and women and their environs in naive style. In the late 1940s he took up painting full-time.
Lowndes first came to Cornwall in 1954 and lived in several locations including Tremedda, at Zennor, returning periodically to Stockport before purchasing a house in St Ives in 1959. He and his family lived in the Digey, and then moved to nearby Halsetown in 1964, remaining there until 1970 when he moved on to Gloucestershire.
Lowndes has been likened in style to the more famous Lowry, in choosing unassuming local subjects direct from life wherever he lived (ie local Cornish fishermen), although Terry FROST contended that Lowndes surpassed him in greatness and scope. From 1970 he and his family lived in Upper Cam, Gloucestershire. Nevertheless, he returned frequently to Cornwall before his death in Gloucester.
His biography has been written by Jonathan Riley (published by Construction Arts Ltd and the Crane Kalman Gallery) to coincide with a major Retrospective exhibition of his work at the Stockport Museum and Art Gallery (February 10 - May 31 2010) and in London at the Crane Kalman Gallery (June 22-July 31, 2010).
Patrick Lowry was born in Surrey. He currently lives and works in Cornwall. He is a tutor at Newlyn School of Art (2016).
Rupert Loydell was born in London. After taking an Art Foundation course in Twickenham, he studied Visual Arts and Creative Writing at MMU in Cheshire, followed by an MA in Creative Writing at Plymouth University. For many years he was managing editor of Stride Books. As a freelance writer, editor and artist, he wrote several creative writing modules for the Open University. Since 2006 he has been a lecturer at Falmouth University.
Lucas was a landscape, portrait, figure and still life painter as well as a lecturer and teacher. He studied at Heatherlys, the RA Schools, St John's Wood, the British Academy and Rome (1888-1889). His paintings are redolent in meticulous detail. His still life pictures often had moralistic titles, such as Dust Crowns All or Foes In The Guise Of Friends, and in one picture a Boy Scout in uniform rebukes two children who have taken a bird's nest.
Suffering poverty and neglect in his later years, Lucas's reputation was re-established when his work began to be noticed on the art market in the 1970s. Geraldine Norman wrote an article called 'Blowing The Dust Off A Forgotten Pre-Impressionist' in The Times in 1972.
Claire Lucas has been living and working as an artist, teacher and workshop facilitator in west Cornwall for over 20 years. In 2010 she founded the Lands End School of Art.
In February 2014, she exhibited 13 paintings of Lands End and environs at the Parallax Art Fair in London, at the Chelsea Town Hall, Kings Road, amongst 200 international artists exhibiting in a wide variety of media. She said: 'This is the first time I’ve exhibited outside of Cornwall in over 10 years, and the first time ever in London.'
Lisa Lucas is a painter, printmaker and maker of jewellery, who lives near Helston.
Luck was mentioned in a Crozier article 'The Newlyn School of Painting' (1904 Girls Realm) as being an advanced student of the Forbes School, and producing 'a surprisingly clever impressionist study of extremely bold design, showing ships at sea as seen through a pane of glass, under the title My Window.' She was the sister of Charles Cardale LUCK, but attended the Forbes School before he came from Scandinavia, although she is not mentioned in Iris Green's study (see Hardie 2009 for list) as attending the School.
A painter who studied with the Forbes school from 1906-10, he invited Samuel John Lamorna BIRCH to Sweden, by way of Norway, for two months in the summer of 1908; fishing and painting were the order of the visit.
Later, Luck married Cecily JESSE, the sister of Fryn Tennyson JESSE. He contributed two wood blocks to the second volume of The Paper Chase, edited by Fryn.
Lucktaylor works from a studio in Buryan, near Penzance. She creates raku and stoneware, hand-built sculptures and mixed-media installations.
Liz Luckwell obtained a BA (Hons) in Art and Social Context from Dartington College of Art in Totnes. As a postgraduate student, she went on to study education at Bristol Polytechnic. Currently she is a part-time lecturer at St Ives School of Painting. Liz has carried out a number of private commissions and has exhibited in London, Bristol, Devon and Cornwall.
An oil painting by this artist, Polperro 1888, depicts a street scene with a shopkeeper and passersby. It is part of the collection held by the Royal Cornwall Museum.
Listed in the 1901 Census as living at Carbis Bay, a 32 year old artist, the wife of Max LUDBY from London. Whybrow notes a Miss Helen Colter Ludby as living at 9 Bellair Terrace and The Croft, Carbis Bay during the 1883-1900 period; this is in all likelihood Mrs Max Ludby.
An artist mentioned as visiting St Ives and working there in the old days by the author Harewood Robinson in 1896. Scott suggests he was a mysterious figure who had studied at the Antwerp Academy from 1882-84, principally a watercolourist, who exhibited regularly at the RBA (elected 1886).
Ludby turned up during 1884 and 1885, along with contemporaries,William Teulon Blandford FLETCHER and Frederick HALL (Fred), in Antwerp, all three of whom (especially the latter two) were to have some connection with Newlyn. This is Max Ludby RI RBA from Cookham, who painted landscapes and genre, and who was also an engraver. He is also recorded as living together with his wife Helen C Ludby, also an artist from London, as living in Lelant. Their daughter Mary Jesse had been born there and was under twelve months old.
Co-founder, alongside DERRICK WILSHAW, of the Lamorna Pottery in 1947. His skill as a pot decorator was greatly admired and as Derrick was the better thrower, they complemented each other.
Chris was born in Limerick, Ireland but after his mother's death, he and his sister were sent to live with relatives in Cornwall. He attended Hayle Grammar School, then became a student at Penzance School of Art. After a few years in St Ives, he worked in retail in Manchester, Liverpool, London and then Cambridge. On the outbreak of World War II he was based in Kingston-upon-Thames, but after volunteering to join the RAF, he served in a number of different locations including India.
After the war, he took advantage of the ex-Servicemen's Training Scheme to train at a pottery in Stoke-on-Trent, where he met a young fellow-student, Derrick Wilshaw. In 1947 Ludlow returned to Penzance and came across the old milk factory in Lamorna, which he and Wilshaw converted to a pottery in order to set up in business together.
Ludlow was not commercially minded and struggled with his mental health so the joint venture was not an unqualified success. While popular with tourists, the range of their ware was not particularly practical. In 1956 Derrick Wilshaw left Lamorna to move to Falmouth.
Chris Ludlow was now assisted by JOHN BODILLY, who had joined the pottery as a fifteen-year-old apprentice in 1953. During the 1960s Ludlow began to lose interest in the business, which was taken over by George and Margaret Smith, who had previously worked at a pottery in Hampstead. This enabled Chris to take a refresher course in pottery in St Johns Wood, London. On his return to Lamorna, artistic differences with the Smiths resulted in a parting of the ways. As a consequence of Ludlow's deteriorating mental health, he spent some time in St Lawrence's Hospital in Bodmin. Following this, he obtained a teaching post at Helston School of Art, but he never fully recovered and died in 1969. Under the terms of his will, the pottery was left to John Bodilly who subsequently sold it to PETER BROWN.
The artist was born in Prague, the son of an artist. No particulars of his stay in Cornwall are known at present, but a correspondent (2014) has found two paintings by Ludovici listed in the catalogue of :City of London Society of Artist and Guildhall Academy of Art, Fourth exhibition at the Guildhall Galleries 20 May – 31 August 1884 417 A bit of the Old Town , St Ives £21174 J. Ludovici Jr [sic] Sale of Fish on the St Ives [beach] £200 – so, a big painting!
Together with William Copeland BORLASE, this artist produced forty tinted lithographic plates of Cornish cromlechs, stone circles and beehive huts, said to be the most accurate drawings ever produced. These were published with the title Prehistoric Stone Monuments of the British Isles: Cornwall (1885).
Mentioned in Whybrow's 1901-10 of artists and associates in and around St Ives.
Helen Lunn is based in Newlyn. Her work is mostly non-figurative and embraces regeneration and renewal.
Thomas Luny was born at St Ewe in Cornwall but his family soon moved to London. He first exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1777, subsequently exhibiting at the RA from 1780-93. He ceased painting and joined the Royal Navy until 1807, when he moved to Teignmouth, probably for health reasons. There he resumed his painting career despite suffering so badly from arthritis that he could only paint with brushes strapped to his wrists.
Judy Lusted studied sculpture at Chelsea College of Arts, and Life Drawing with Clive Garland at Camberwell School of Arts. In 2002 she obtained a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Falmouth College of Art,followed by an MA in Contemporary Visual Arts two years later. Her abstract style has evolved from spontaneous mark making which releases her inner energy, providing exciting raw imagery. Judy is a regular exhibitor at the Mariners Gallery in St Ives, and at the Riverside Gallery, Barnes, London. Her work can also be seen at 2 The Galleries, St Ives, and Out of the Blue Gallery in Marazion.
Gareth Lye was born in Wales. His painting cannot be confined to a genre but is rooted in draughtsmanship. He is a member of STISA.
Lyle moved with her husband and young family to Cornwall in 1964, to work on a smallholding for some few years. Early in her artistic career she began a small business in decorated ceramics, but, as as she expresses in her artist's statement in 2000, she has moved forward onto a heartier, more organic 'canvas' for her work - 'water on rock, water on pigment, on paper, acid on metal.'
Janet Lynch studied at St Martins School of Art and Hornsey College. A member of the NSA, Lynch's work has been exhibited at the Rainyday Gallery in Penzance. She is a regular exhibitor at STISA open shows.
Beyond Cornwall, she has held solo exhibitions in London at White Space Gallery, Islington Arts Factory and Lauderdale House. She has also participated in group exhibitions including the Barbican, Royal Academy Summer Show and the Hyde Park Gallery. In 2018 her paintings were shown in the prestigious Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize exhibition.
Arthur Jacob Lyons was born into a large Jewish family in Paddington, London. His parents were Frederick Moses Lyons and Esther Blanche Davis. He started off as an apprentice to his father, a warehouseman, before going on to study at the Royal Academy Schools from 1894 to 1897. He married an Australian, Zillah Louise Mandelson, in 1898.
Around 1900 he was in Bexhill, becoming the Principal of the newly established School of Art and Science. Reports of the School's opening describe him as 'an old scholar of the Royal Academy Schools' who had 'won a reputation in London for his black and white work. He has done a good deal of illustrating for the leading periodicals, and been an exhibitor of landscape and figure painting. Having had a considerable experience in teaching, Mr Lyons is well qualified for giving lessons in drawing and painting in all their branches.' In 1911 he exhibited at the Royal Academy, and also in Liverpool.
David Tovey has written of Lyons' career as follows: 'Lyons was a London-born figure painter, who based himself in Paris in the pre-First World War years, and took refuge in St Ives for a while on the outbreak of the War. However, whilst his stay was brief, he seems to have become fully involved with the community. Fehrer records him as studying at the Julian Academy in 1900 under Bouguereau and Ferrier, and he first started exhibiting his work in Paris in 1908. He also appears to have studied under J P Laurens, as he won a medal at the Salon in 1909 for his depiction of a banquet of Laurens’ students. He came to St Ives in July 1914, took a house in Sea View Terrace and appears to have shared Edmund Fuller’s studio on the Quay. In December 1914, he did a colour illustration for the St Ives Times depicting Kaiser Wilhelm being cooked in a pot with the allied commanders looking on, with monies raised from the sale going to the paper’s “Tobacco for the Troops” fund. He also contributed to the Belgian Relief Fund.
Lyons participated in Show Day in 1915, when his principal exhibit was Au Cinema, a painting of the interior of a Paris cinema, which he had shown at the Salon the previous year. The reviewer was impressed, “Mr A J Lyons is an artist with a decided talent for portraiture and figure study. His principal canvas Au Cinema has afforded ample scope for the display of his abilities in this direction. It shows the interior of a cinema during a performance, and he has endeavoured to portray - and with much success - the varying types of features naturally found in such a place. The figure of a soldier, who occupies the central position, is a splendid piece of portrait painting. The amount of work put into the picture is amazing, but the quality throughout is well maintained.” He also showed two other figure studies, The Blue Robe, described as ”an attractive and brilliantly coloured theme”, and Chrysanthemums. In early April 1915, Lyons agreed to paint a 24” x 20” canvas, with the proceeds going to the Fire Relief Fund, set up when the Salvation Army building was burnt down that March, a disaster which resulted in a number of locals losing their livelihood. However, this only seems to have been sold for 10s-6d (Edmund Fuller’s painting done for the same cause fetched £2-10 and William Parkyn’s £1-1). However, on 23rd April 1915, the local paper noted that Lyons had resigned from the War Relief Fund, as he was leaving St Ives. A painting of a Harlequinade dancer, dated 1915, one of the only works by him to have come on the market recently, is likely to have been done in London, where he was recorded as living for his exhibits in 1920. He had one last success at the Paris Salon in 1928.' [Courtesy of David Tovey]
In the 1921 census he is resident in Kensington, together with his wife Zillah and 18-year-old son Douglas Arthur Lyons. He is described as an advertising artist and an employer. Zillah died in 1924. The following year, he changed his name to Arthur John Templeman, which he announced in The London Gazette, saying that he had 'renounced and abandoned the name of Arthur Jacob Lyons', describing himself as a designer. In 1929 he moved to The Manor House at Great Wymondley, near Hitchin, from where he was advertising sketching classes. A contemporary press story also records that he had offered to design the costumes and scenery for the local drama society.
He married Jeanette Alice Bateman in 1933. In the 1939 England and Wales Register he is recorded under the name of Templeton as an artist (painter) living in Hitchin. An annotation records that he is an air raid warden and as 'Ret: Indian Army Reserve Supply & Transport Corps'. He died in Hitchin in 1948.
This listing has been updated (2023) thanks to the rigorous research of Ann Bukantas, recently retired after 20 years as Head of Fine Art for National Museums Liverpool, with responsibility for the fine art collections at the Walker Art Gallery, Lady Lever Art Gallery and Sudley House.