Black Gallery

William Hayler Bishop, Henry Scott Tuke (1858-1929)

Oil on canvas, Newlyn School, late 19th / early 20th century. Portrait of elderly gentleman with grey beard and moustache, dressed in dark suit and tie. Henry Scott Tuke was born into a Quaker family in Lawrence Street, York. In 1859 the family moved to Falmouth, where his father Daniel Tuke , a physician, established a practice. Tuke was encouraged to draw and paint from an early age and some of his earliest drawings, aged four or five years old, were published in 1895. In 1875, he enrolled in the Slade School of Art. Initially his father paid for his tuition but in 1877 Tuke won a scholarship, which allowed him to continue his training at the Slade and in Italy in 1880. From 1881 to 1883 he was in Paris where he met the artist Jules Bastien-Lepage, who encouraged him to paint en plein air (in the open air) a method of working that came to dominate his practice. While studying in France, Tuke decided to move to Newlyn, Cornwall where many of his Slade and Parisian friends had already formed the Newlyn School of painters. He received several lucrative commissions there, after exhibiting his work at the Royal Academy of Art in London. In 1885, he returned to Falmouth where many of his major works were produced. He became an established artist and was elected to full membership of the Royal Academy in 1914. Tuke suffered a heart attack in 1928 and died in March 1929. In his will he left generous amounts of money to some of the men who, as boys, had been his models. Today he is remembered mainly for his oil paintings of young men, but in addition to his achievements as a figurative painter, he was an established maritime artist and produced as many portraits of sailing ships as he did human figures. He was a prolific artist, over 1,300 works are listed and more are still being discovered

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John Vivian of Pencalenick, John Opie (1761-1807)

Oil on canvas, English School, around 1780. A portrait of a young John Vivian of Pencalenick (1772-1817). Vivian later became a Barrister and was High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1812. John Opie was born in Harmony Cottage, Trevellas, between St Agnes and Perranporth in Cornwall. He was the youngest of the five children of Edward Opie, a master carpenter, and his wife Mary (nee Tonkin). He showed a precocious talent for drawing and mathematics, and by the age of twelve he had mastered the teachings of Greek mathematician Euclid and opened an evening school for poor children where he taught reading, writing and arithmetic. His father, however, did not encourage his abilities, and apprenticed him to his own trade of carpentry. Opie's artistic abilities eventually came to the attention of local physician and satirist, Dr John Wolcot (who used the pen name Peter Pindar), who visited him at the sawmill where he was working in 1775. Recognising a great talent, Wolcot became Opie's mentor, buying him out of his apprenticeship and insisting that he come to live at his home in Truro. Wolcot provided invaluable encouragement, advice, tuition and practical help in the advancement of his early career, including obtaining many commissions for work. In 1781, having gained considerable experience as a portraitist travelling around Cornwall, Opie moved to London with Wolcot. There they lived together, having entered into a formal profit-sharing agreement. Although Opie had received a considerable artistic education from Wolcot, the doctor chose to present him as a self-taught prodigy; a portrait of a boy shown at the Society of Artists the previous year, had been described in the catalogue as "an instance of Genius, not having ever seen a picture." Wolcot introduced the "Cornish wonder" to leading artists, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was to compare him to Caravaggio and Velazquez

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Still Life, Walter Langley (1852-1922)

Oil on board, Newlyn School, late 19th / early 20th century. Walter Langley was born in Birmingham, the eighth of eleven children of William Langley, a tailor, and his wife, Mary Ann. He was enrolled at the age of ten in evening classes at the Birmingham School of Design. He was apprenticed to lithographer, August Heinrich Biermann, and through lithography was introduced to the use of watercolour. Attracted to the medium, he set about learning to paint. He finally abandoned lithography to take up painting as a profession in 1879. In 1880, Langley visited Newlyn briefly and in the following year spent periods in both Brittany and Newlyn. He settled in Newlyn in 1882, one of the first artists to arrive there. His humble beginnings and his struggle for artistic recognition gave him a sympathetic insight into the hardships faced by the Newlyn community in its attempts to gain a livelihood from the sea. A study of a fisherman's widow, Time Moveth Not, Our Being Tis That Moves, submitted to the Dudley Gallery's Spring 1883 exhibition, caused a sensation and led to his membership of the Institute of Painters in Watercolour. Apart from a return to Birmingham in 1866-1867 and brief excursions to the continent, Langley remained for the rest of his life in Cornwall. He was honoured in 1886 by an exhibition of watercolours at the New Art Gallery in Birmingham and received international recognition through the award of a gold medal for watercolours at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. The fact that this still-life study (dedicated to his friend and fellow artist Ralph Todd) is painted in oils makes it an unusual addition to Langley's canon of work

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