MY PASSION FOR CORNWALL, AND THE ST IVES SCHOOL
Cornwall is in my DNA, when I was a boy it was the place where I felt most at home, and where my roots were. My family visited every Summer, often at Easter too, for over twenty years. I shall never forget the annual pilgrimage, the journey, the sense of anticipation and excitement as we drove past the ‘Welcome to Cornwall’ sign on the A30, finally reaching our destination ten or more hours after leaving home (in the days before motorways).
As the one constant in a somewhat nomadic upbringing (my mother used to say that she was on the run from suburbia) Cornwall was and still is my spiritual home. Visiting forty or more years later brings back waves of nostalgia for those early years, childhood memories of long summer days in the coastal villages of Polruan and Fowey and their surrounding beaches, Readymoney Cove, Polkerris, Lantic Bay and Lantivet Bay. Since my childhood I have continued to visit, bringing my two elder children when they were little, skimming stones, building sandcastles and rock-pooling. And last year, when Covid restrictions were lifted, I visited with my wife and youngest son
‘What has this got to do with art and my career in the art world?’
Intertwined with memories of my childhood the physicality of Cornwall is ever present; the weather, the landscape, the moors, the hedgerows, estuaries and beaches, the sand, the granite rocks and stone, the sheer vastness of it all. As I was growing up the physical and human characteristics of Cornwall became a central influence on my love of art and architecture.
As I grew older and became interested in art, I began to appreciate how fundamental the physicality of the Cornish environment is to its artists, illustrated by the St Ives group, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron and many more.
At Sotheby’s I was privileged to work in an immersive artistic environment. A walk through the galleries on the way to a meeting, glimpsing world class art and antiques, Old Master Paintings, Medieval Works of Art , Impressionist and Modern paintings and much more. But the auction previews that I never missed and the auction catalogues that I coveted were those of the Modern and Post War British art sales. One sale I particularly remember was ‘The Eye of the Collector, Works from the Collection of Stanley J Seeger’, the greatest collection of works from the St Ives School to come to market at that time. It included several magnificent works by Peter Lanyon, arguably my favourite artist and for me the greatest of the St Ives School artists.
Peter Lanyon was St Ives born and bred (unlike most of the St Ives School artists, who were drawn to the town, attracted by the light, the landscape and the artist community). He was a mercurial artist who, like many great painters, musicians and movie stars of the twentieth century, died tragically and too soon. In his case he had a fatal gliding accident. He used to fly in his glider to take aerial photographs of the Cornish landscape, using them to construct many of his paintings and sculptures. He was forty six years old.
In 2015 there was a wonderful exhibition of Lanyon’s work at the Courtauld Gallery in London, ‘Soaring Flight, Peter Lanyon’s Gliding Paintings’. After seeing the show I reflected on how Lanyon and his fellow St Ives artists deserved to be placed alongside the great international post war contemporary artists, most particularly the abstract expressionist artists of the USA, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko. Rothko had visited St Ives in 1959, invited to stay by Lanyon. Further research revealed that Lanyon and Patrick Heron had exhibited in the USA in the 1950’s and at that time there had been a healthy debate about who came first, the Americans or the British. I believe that like many other trans-Atlantic art and musical movements of the twentieth century, for example punk rock and the fashion and culture that it spawned, they were influencing each other.
As time passed I found myself experiencing the pangs and desires of an avid art lover, wanting to personally own such works of art and to build a small collection of my own, and some years later in a modest way this dream has come true.
It is extraordinary to think that in the years preceding, during, and after the Second World War, St Ives, a small fishing village in Cornwall, could justifiably claim to being at the epicentre of the global art scene. I believe that the history of 20th Century art was informed by the school of St Ives and that it deserves its own chapter, shaped by leading artists such as Hepworth, Lanyon, Ben Nicholson, Patrick Heron, Paul Feiler, John Wells and Sandra Blow.
Their art connects with me both aesthetically and emotionally, it touches my soul and will forever take me back to Cornwall, my upbringing, that of my three children and also today the relationship with my wife, because she has also come to love both the St Ives School artists and Cornwall itself.
Bibliography.
- Soaring Flight. Peter Lanyon’s Gliding Paintings, Exhibition Catalogue, 2015.
- St Ives 1939-64. Tate Gallery, Exhibition Catalogue. 1985.
- The Eye of the Collector: Works from the collection of Stanley J Seeger (Sothebys auction catalogue)