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The News, Newlyn Harbour by Walter Langley
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The News, Newlyn Harbour by Walter Langley, detail
Walter Langley 1852-1922
The News, Newlyn Harbour, 1903
Watercolour and body colour on paper
59.5 x 43.8 cm (23 1/2 x 17 1/4 ins)
Framed: 82.5 x 66.7 cm (32 1/2 x 26 1/4 ins)
Framed: 82.5 x 66.7 cm (32 1/2 x 26 1/4 ins)
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News of the Newlyn fishing fleet was a subject Langley and other Newlyn artists returned to repeatedly. It presented a means, short of going to sea, of expressing the risks and perils faced by this small community of fishermen and their families in West Cornwall. 'The News, Newlyn Harbour' was exhibited in the annual Birmingham Art Circle exhibition at the Graves Gallery, most likely in 1903. Along with his Birmingham friend and peer Edwin Harris, Langley had pioneered the Newlyn School in 1882, making this 1903 work a mature Newlyn painting by one of its leading artists at the height of his powers.
Provenance
The Harborne Collection.
The Graves Gallery, Birmingham - c 1903.
Exhibitions
The Birmingham Art Circle Annual Exhibition at The Graves Gallery, Birmingham, c. 1903
Painted by the pioneer of the Newlyn Colony of Artists in 1903, The News, Newlyn Harbour is a subject to which Walter Langley returned on a number of occasions. His depictions of an ‘old salt’ or fishwife reading news from the fishing fleet carry a particular poignancy: for the families of Newlyn, news from the harbour could mean news of a son, grandson or husband at sea, with all the uncertainty and danger that deep-sea fishing entailed.
Here, Langley combines this human story with a wonderfully observed evocation of Newlyn itself. In the background is the medieval Old Newlyn Quay, with four fishing boats lying alongside. Around the fisherman are details that firmly place the scene within the working life of the harbour: a heavy red sail and coil of rope, probably belonging to a Newlyn lugger, a fish basket and small blue water barrel, together with further rope and a large oar.
The fisherman himself is characteristically observed, dressed in his sou’wester, fisherman’s smock and boots. His pipe rests loosely in his hand as he pauses to reflect upon the news he has just read. It is this combination of closely observed detail and quiet human drama that gives Langley’s Newlyn paintings their enduring appeal.
Born in Birmingham, Langley was the pioneering figure of the Newlyn School and retained strong connections with his native city, where many of his patrons were based. In 1879, together with ten contemporaries seeking to challenge the established exhibition system, he founded the Birmingham Art Circle. Exhibitions were held in Birmingham almost every year between 1879 and 1907, at the Graves Gallery in Cherry Street.
The News, Newlyn Harbour was exhibited at one of these Birmingham Art Circle exhibitions, and the original Graves Gallery label remains intact on the reverse of the painting. The work was subsequently part of the Harborne Collection, which included a number of important Newlyn paintings.
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