Above the Fishing Village

Based at Wentworth Studios in Manresa Road, Chelsea, from the beginning of 1887, the young Frank Brangwyn was at the centre of the London art world. Here the most radical British painters of his day would congregate at weekends to debate the reform of exhibiting societies and share ideas. Having established the New English Art Club in 1886, many of Brangwyn's neighbours were now discussing Henry Herbert La Thangue's suggestion of a 'bigger movement' that would take on the might of the Royal Academy. This was necessary because the young Brangwyn's naturalistic painting inspired by Bastien-Lepage, and practiced by George Clausen, Fred Brown and the artists of the Newlyn and Glasgow schools, was regarded with open hostility by Academicians. He was now identified with these 'Chelsea Conspirators'.

His training up to this point was unconventional. Spotted by Harold Rathbone while copying Donatello reliefs in the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) he was introduced to William Morris at the age of fifteen and taken on as an apprentice. In Morris's workshops in Oxford Street, high Socialist ideals were combined with the handcrafting of textiles and stained glass. However, after two years, Brangwyn's ambitions to become a painter led him away from Morris and in 1885 he exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy.1 Eventually he arrived penniless at the studios in Manresa Road hoping that contact with its 'colony of artists' would result in an upturn in his fortunes. Here he shared accommodation at first with the marine painter, Ernest Dade and they joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve together. The consistent message coming from the Saturday evening discussions in the nearby studio of Jacomb Hood was that painters must find rural retreats, paint real rustics and work in the open air. Thus in the autumn of 1887, Frederick Mills, Brangwyn's aged colour merchant, fearing that he might give up painting for a life at sea, commissioned him to travel down to the west country to find undiscovered fishing villages in which to work.

Brangwyn boarded the Waterford packet boat from London to Falmouth where the sight of the busy harbour on an October morning filled him with excitement.2 However he did not remain there for long and, rather than venturing west to Newlyn, he struck out up the coast in a north-easterly direction towards Fowey stopping at smaller inlets along the way. So cut off were these places that it was sometimes necessary to complete the journey on foot with canvases and easel strapped to his back and it was along this coastal path, probably on the hillside above Portloe, that the present canvas was painted. This tiny hamlet flanked by sloping hillsides and rocky shores remains much as it did when Brangwyn painted it (see Sunday by Frank Brangwyn, circa 1887-9, Newport Art Gallery, Gwent).

Along this coastline he also worked at Gorran Haven, recording fishermen mending their nets, while at Mevagissey and Fowey he produced harbour scenes, including the splendid Fowey Harbour, Cornwall. (Mending the Nets, 1887, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne and Fowey Harbour, Cornwall, 1887, sold Christie's, 27 November 2002).3

The present canvas is a textbook example of the new spirit in the painting of the 1880s. It takes a sweeping view of the coastline looking north-east, with the cluster of fishermen's cottages visible at the foot of the hill. On this grassy bank sits a young girl looking out to sea, and further down the hill we can pick out the back view of a man heading for the village. At such vantage points women would sometimes congregate to scan the horizon for the return of their menfolk, as may be the case with Girl on a Hillside (1887, sold Christie's, 2 March 1989); they were also trysting places where eligible sons and daughters might meet.4

However the most extraordinary aspect of Above the Fishing Village is its methodical technique. Painters of Brangwyn's generation were producing low-toned, plein air canvases with a 'square brush' application that demanded the consistent light of grey days. The Wentworth and Trafalgar studios were the centre of this practice, best described by Morley Roberts as,

'... a technical method which puts paint on canvas in a particular way with a square brush, which many of the older men never use. Those who practice it in its simplest form leave the brush-marks and do not smooth away the evidence of method, this insisting on the way the picture is painted ...'5.

This can, the writer continues, lead to 'the sacrifice of subtleties' - clearly not the case in the present picture. In fact there could be no finer example of the 'Square Brush School' than Above the Fishing Village. It is almost a tableau à thèse. It reveals that although he chose not to go there, the painter - and his patron - were clearly aware of the burgeoning of the Newlyn School, and although, on occasion, its members would paint coastal views similar to the present picture, the surviving examples, such as Norman Garstin's Newlyn from 'The Meadow' and The Tryst (circa 1890, private collection) may follow, rather than precede, Brangwyn's painting.6

These were nevertheless controversial pictures. Dubbed 'French fakements' by critics for whom they signified the worst mannerisms of the Paris ateliers, they were regarded as proof that British painting was 'in peril'. The counter-arguments emanating from Manresa Road and advocated in the pages of The Magazine of Art and the letters columns of The Times, were that the legacy of costume genre and pale Pre-Raphaelitism was bankrupt, and that teaching standards in art schools were lamentable. A painter needed to learn technique, and this was best acquired from observation on the motif - but more important was the opportunity for self-discovery, for accepting the challenge of nature in the open air. Brangwyn faced this on a Cornish hillside when a grey haze hung over the sea and for this reason alone, Above the Fishing Village merits our serious attention.7 In the years that followed, the painter/mariner would sail to Turkey, to South Africa and travel through northern Spain with the Scots painter, Arthur Melville. He would be transformed by these experiences and would take on the colourful palette and vigorous handling we associate with the great mural sequences of the early twentieth century. There can be no doubt however that the young man who walked the Cornish headlands between Falmouth and Fowey in 1887 discovered essential truths about himself and his craft that only this magic season and situation could impart.

We are very grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for preparing the catalogue entries for lots 7, 23 and 29.


1 This was A Bit on the Esk, near Whitby, (unlocated) a small picture produced as a result of a voyage up the east coast.

2 Rodney Brangwyn, Brangwyn, 1978 (William Kimber), p. 38. See also Walter Shaw Sparrow, Frank Brangwyn and his Work, 1915 , (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.), p. 19.

3 Details of Brangwyn's production in these villages and the precise dates of his visits remain obscure. Rodney Brangwyn (p. 39) reports that he returned to London at various points to keep Mills up to date with his recent work and that the commuting between London and Cornwall went on for a year. Sunday, circa 1887, can be identified as a view of the harbour inlet at Portloe, and although the topography does not appear exact, with its surrounding hillsides sweeping towards the sea it remains the most likely setting for the present picture. The matter is complicated by the fact that none of the extant Cornish works carry their original titles - thus Mending the Nets, may in fact be A Cornish Yard, exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists in the winter of 1887.

4 Rodney Brangwyn (p. 40) tells us that the young painter formed such a brief liaison with a local girl at this time.

5 Morley Roberts, 'A Colony of Artists', Scottish Art Review, vol. II, 1889, p. 73. This article carries an illustration of the young Brangwyn in his studio (p.75).

6 Garstin's Newlyn from 'The Meadow', (Private Collection), a small work 15 x 9 in., has been dated circa 1884, but there is no evidence that he was there before the autumn of 1886 and The Tryst, a larger work 36 x 24 in., may date from circa 1890-1900.

7 Recent studies of Brangwyn's work - principally Libby Horner and Gillian Naylor (eds.), exhibition catalogue, Frank Brangwyn 1867-1956, Leeds, City Art Galleries, 2006; and Mina Oya et al, exhibition catalogue, Frank Brangwyn, Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, 2010 - have tended to neglect Brangwyn's Cornish period.