British Impressionists

1. Introduction
2. Henry Scott Tuke >
3. Victorian & Edwardian Artists >


The arrival in 1884 of Stanhope Alexander Forbes (1857-1947) to Newlyn, a small fishing village at the south-western tip of Cornwall was to have a dramatic effect on British art. He attracted a colony of outstanding artists that had a common approach to painting, working out of doors in front of their subject. They helped popularise ideas emanating from the ateliers of Paris, Antwerp and Munich, in particular the philosophy of Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884). Both a sense of place and the concept of plein air painting were central to Bastien-Lepage's art. Stanhope Forbes taught the philosophy of plein air painting for fifty years from 1889 to 1939 at the Forbes School of Painting, which he ran firstly with his wife, Elizabeth, and then after her death with his second wife, Maudie. His own work reflected some of the changes in the international art scene moving from realism to an adapted form of British Impressionism. One of the key artists to come to Newlyn was Henry Scott Tuke. He settled in Falmouth and is one of the most highly regarded of the British Impressionists.