RE: The Walker Art Gallery - Off to the Fishing Grounds (by Stanhope Forbes) - Art Appreciation and Haiku #5

[agmoore]

You got me interested in this artist. I looked a little further and learned he lost his son in 1916 (WWI). I wonder if there was less light and more dark in his work after that. The pictures shown here, and other early pictures are almost idyllic.

Thanks for the introduction.

Comments

[raj808]

Hi Agmoore.

I also read a lot further into this artist and found out some fascinating information, enough to have made this post much longer tbh, but right now I have about as much time as I have patience for hive. The amount of research I did on this artist would have better been published in a pamphlet to sit in the walker art gallery.

Last time I got involved in a 'lively debate' about long-form content with one of the bigwigs of hive they said "this isn't the place for it" yet I see some people are highly rewarded for writing more than 500 words, and other darlings of certain communities make $70+ on average/post, while writing 2-3 paragraphs with a load of photos.

I can see no sense to it anymore, and so I write as much as is sensible given the rewards I make. But I'm venting...

I wonder if there was less light and more dark in his work after that. The pictures shown here, and other early pictures are almost idyllic.

I think undoubtedly his son's death in The Great War affected him deeply, but I'm not sure how much this translated into his art. Surely, before that time and during him and his wife raising their son it sounds like they lived an idyllic life, and that Alec was the subject of many paintings reflecting this countryside paradise.

In 1884 Stanhope Forbes moved to Newlyn in Cornwall and became the leading figure in the artists’ colony that developed there. In 1889 he married a fellow artist, Elizabeth Armstrong who had been born in Ontario, Canada; Alec was their only child. He spent his formative years surrounded by painters and other members of the artistic community. His mother painted him lying reading in the sand and, on another occasion, reading under a tree (captioned The Half Holiday. Alec home from school) and also captured the young Alec in cricket whites, ready to go out to bat. A portrait of a young boy playing the piano by Stanhope Forbes looks very like Alec.
_{Source: bedales.org.uk}

Perhaps his palette became a little more subdued, but as far as I can tell he continued painting coastal scenes in Newlyn, the place he lived and loved.

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