St Ives

Western Cornwall has been a magnet for artists and tourists alike for more than 130 years.  The introduction of the railway in 1876 brought the first tourists, while artists gathered in neaby Newlyn from the late nineteenth century and then in St Ives from the late 1930s.  The artistice community grew steadily during the subsequent decades until it attracted the attention of the international art world in the 1950s.  The so-called St Ives school has no coherent style or manifesto; while many artists were committed to abstraction, others pursued a more figurative path.  The uniting factor is that all were in some way or another affected by the landscape and light at the westernmost tip of Britain.