Stanhope Forbes and the Newlyn School

A group of artists, known as the Newlyn School, gathered around Forbes and his wife Elizabeth (also a painter) in the West Cornwall fishing town of Newlyn at the very end of the 19th century.

Many of the Newlyn painters had previously spent time in Brittany, where they had imbibed the French style of rural realism that became central to the Newlyn philosophy. The early genre works in particular employ the characteristic square brush technique, producing an effect of simplicity and solidity, befitting the subjects.