From Celts to Colonists
Viewed as a whole, artistic activity in west Cornwall has at least a 3,000-year history. The extraordinary presence of prehistoric standing stones and Celtic carvings, as well as indigenous craft traditions, have continued to influence art made in the region in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In terms of modern art history, the first notable date is 1811, the year JMW Turner visited the Duchy. Turner's sketches from this trip record Cornwall's natural beauty and romantic remoteness, and they inaugurate the dialogue between artist and landscape that dominates the later history of art in the region.
In the Victorian period, artistic activity in west Cornwall was bound up with wider social and economic developments. In the Midlands and the North the booming industrial towns provided education and employment for trained artists and designers. At the same time in Cornwall the traditional industries of fishing and tin-mining were in steep decline. The Great Western Railway arrived in St Ives in 1877, and the town's new accessibility brought a regular stream of visitors. New houses and hotels sprang up in the higher reaches surrounding the harbour, and between 1900 and 1920 St Ives gradually came to terms with its status as a resort and a working base for artists.
The first wave of artists to base themselves in St Ives came from more varied backgrounds than their Newlyn counterparts, and until the 1900s they tended to be summer migrants rather than permanent 'colonists'. An important figure was Julius Olsson, who was already a well-known artist before he settled in St Ives. In 1902 he began working in the Porthmeor Studios in old net lofts overlooking Porthmeor Beach where he also ran an 'atelier' style art school.
St Ives's growing reputation made it, like Newlyn, a place for aspiring artists to visit early in their careers, and many, such as the Canadian Emily Carr or the Swedish artist Anders Zorn were from overseas. The town benefited from the fashionable appeal of artists' colonies in remote areas, combined with the availability of studio space and tuition. In addition, there were professional connections between artists in the teaching institutions in London and those in the art colonies. The early cosmopolitan mix of visitors to St Ives persisted throughout the colony's history. Between 1884 and 1920 prominent artists who visited Cornwall for varying lengths of time included James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Walter Sickert, Frances Hodgkins, Matthew Smith and Cedric Morris.