Exeter to Penzance.....
 |
| Exeter Cathedral |
To shelter from the heat, or, possibly, to seek sanctuary from the fires of hell, we walk through the fourteenth century screen on the west front of Exeter Cathedral and enter the cool stone nave of this marvel of design and reconstruction (Exeter was targeted by the Luftwaffe in May 1942, in what was known as the Baedeker Blitz, in retaliation for the RAF bombing of Lübeck - the St James's chapel was destroyed by a direct hit)
Looking up, I see St Thomas a Beckett holding the roof together.....
And in colourful relief where the arches meet on corbelled plinths I see Mary and family:
And, according to some, the head of William the Conqueror:
Here is the tomb of Sir Richard Stapledon, murdered in 1326 by a mob in the City of London whilst trying to rescue his brother, the Bishop.
In the sixteenth century Bishop Hugh Oldham was buried in a chantry chapel on the south side of the retroquire. His device was the owl (his name was pronounced "owl-dom") and there are 59 sculpted rebuses of owls on the walls and ceilings of this chapel.
The choir (quire) stalls contain some of the earliest English misericords, and some other engaging carvings. This whale was executed in a Victorian makeover, but is nicely in keeping with some of the older woodwork here.....
Another memorial is the Martyrs' Pulpit, also designed by George Gilbert Scott, and installed in 1877 in honour of Bishop John Coleridge Patteson, who was killed in Melanesia.... This panel represents the fourth century beheading of the first British Christian Martyr, St Alban....
So, having been inducted into a potted history of art through the ages, we motor south by south west, into the past.....
I last visited Penzance many years ago, before the pandemic, before the Lehman brothers collapse and the global financial crisis. It was a time when piracy was in vogue, and our nautical history was fresh:
I am reminded of my distant home by this plaque, as Admiral of the Fleet Sir Cloudesley Shovell's maternal grandmother's father was Thomas Cloudisley of Cley-next-the-sea in Norfolk. As here commemorated, Cloudesley met his end along with 1,400 men not far from Penzance harbour.
And, as if the town is still in mourning, things are not as buoyant as they were on my earlier visit:
Even though there is much to be said for the town and its history - Chapel Street has some fine buildings, including this one....
The economy is not what it was in the heydays of the fishing and mining industries and though the population is now in the region of 15,000 (it was around 3,000 a hundred years ago), Penzance East has one of the highest unemployment rates (15.4%) in Cornwall......
But, despite this scratchy nude above the fireplace (a Tracey Emin, no less),
Penlee House Gallery & Museum is (as its website advertises) the perfect place to discover the art of West Cornwall, including the works of the Newlyn School and Lamorna artists. In an elegant villa set in sub-tropical gardens the museum covers local history, from amazing archaeological finds to fabulous ceramics, social history and fashion..... And it is currently hosting an exhibition entitled Making Her Mark: A Celebration of Women in Art....
.jpg) |
| Portrait of Eileen Mayo by Dod Procter née Shaw (1890 to 1972) |
Doris (‘Dod’) Shaw was seventeen when her mother brought her and her brother to Newlyn to study at the Forbes’ School of Painting. In those days women did not have access to life classes and so they tended to model for each other. By the 1920s, classes were more open and as a student at the Slade, Eileen Mayo (1906-1994), began posing for classes. She then went on to model regularly for Laura and Harold Knight, as well as for Dod, before going on to teach at Saint Martin’s School of Art, before emigrating to Australia and then New Zealand.
I love this picture - the tones are beautiful and the thoughtful expression, in the face and in the pose, conveys, to me at least, something of the contradictions implicit in all art. Not just the artificiality of light and dimension, but also, in this case, that of the complications of sex and gender.
We have come a long way from Ruskin's pompous declaration that greatness in art was beyond the female range..... As the curators of this exhibition point out, Art collectives [have played] a vital role in the story of women in art. From the late nineteenth century, the Newlyn School, Lamorna Colony, and later the St Ives Modernists in Cornwall provided space where women could work and exhibit alongside male peers, asserting identities beyond wife, mother, model, or muse.....
This picture (below) is perhaps an example. Maria Robinson studied in Dublin and Paris and moved to St Ives in 1885, becoming, with her husband, a founder member of the St Ives Arts Club. At the time, women artists who wished to portray adult males were disapproved of, but this calm scene apparently touched Victorian viewers, even though the title is taken from a poem by Charles Kingsley (nb not the twentieth century poet Charles Causley) and the story does not end well:
%20.jpg) |
Three Fishers went sailing out into the west, out into the west as the sun went down (1895) by Maria Dorothy Robinson née Webb (1840 - 1920) |
Three wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,
And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;
They looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,
And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.
But men must work, and women must weep,
Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,
And the harbour bar be moaning.
Charles Kingsley
Information about this exhibition goes on to say that: Artists such as Paula Rego (1935-2022) used the self-portrait to work through love, loss, illness, ageing, and other milestones. Some, like Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) employed it to navigate ideas around pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, taking an ‘anti-beauty’ approach, far removed from the Madonna and Child.....
In 1985, artist activists the Guerrilla Girls made a poster that asked, ‘Do women have to be naked to get into New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art?’ Their point? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women; 85% of the nudes are female.
And, going back to Dod Procter and Eileen Mayo it seems, to me, that they have portrayed something of this challenge and to have produced a portrait that transcends the arguments.
This is a wonderful exhibition, even though, as it has principally been drawn from three collections, there are some notable absences (who am I to say? but perhaps something by Gwen John, and maybe Sarah Lucas, for examples, might have been appropriate?) In comparison a look back at the Tate exhibition Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520 - 1920, in 2024 is informative....
The Penlee House Gallery also has a permanent collection which includes many representations of the Newlyn School, including this painting of Penzance promenade:
.jpg) |
| The Rain it Raineth Every Day (1889) by Norman Garstin (1847 - 1927) |
Which picture languished for a long time in the basement of the Town Hall as the Council thought it showed a negative aspect of Penzance.... It is now the most popular picture in the gallery.....
*****
We have come quite a long way from Exeter, and have miles yet to travel, so look out for more about St Ives and the light of Cornwall in my next piece......
 |
| St Ives at sundown, from Podn Olva |
*****
