St Ives is unique in British art history as a place that has given its name to a modern art movement. Its period of highest international profile was perhaps in the years 1956 to 1964, when many of the artists associated with the town were exhibiting in the USA and elsewhere abroad, but there had always been (and continues to be) a strong cosmopolitan element in the town's artistic life. Visitors to Tate St Ives will notice that a high proportion of the artists shown in the main displays and featured in exhibitions either came from abroad or were exploring art styles that had originated far from the Cornish milieu.
The distinctive cosmopolitanism of St Ives art is an interesting phenomenon. Where else in Britain, outside London and other major cities, has a genuinely international artistic tradition flourished so long? West Cornwall and St Ives in particular have often been felt to be more Mediterranean than English in their climate and quality of light – the way the eye is constantly drawn towards and surprised by the sea, leaving all thoughts of 'mainland' England behind. This has certainly been a major feature in the area's attraction for very different kinds of artists.
So many wide-ranging international connections can be traced to and from St Ives over the years that there is room here to highlight only a few. In 1883–4, for example, in the earliest days of the St Ives art colony, the American-born painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler spent a winter working in the town: his sketches show a profound response to the moods of light and cloud of the north-west sky facing Porthmeor Beach.
Among the first young artists to come to study in St Ives were the New Zealand-born Frances Hodgkins and the Canadian Emily Carr. In 1920 Bernard Leach set up his pottery in St Ives after twelve years in Japan. He brought a highly personal vision of the meeting of Western and Eastern aesthetic and spiritual values embodied in the work of the artist-craftsman. Despite the fact that the area, with its dearth of suitable clays and of timber for kiln-firing, was not a promising location for a pottery, Leach found that his work and thought could thrive in Cornwall. The Leach Pottery became a place of pilgrimage for studio potters worldwide.
In the 1940s the presence of Naum Gabo linked St Ives with mainstream European modernism, while Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson's fame made St Ives seem for a while the capital of British art. In the period since 1945 the growth of travel, communications and the increasing internationalisation – even globalisation – of the art world have been reflected in the hundreds of artists who have either settled or spent important phases of their careers in and around St Ives.