Search results for ""Author Tom Cross""

By 1918 St Ives had a long tradition as an artists' community. It took as its standard the Royal Academy, which retained great popular appeal, but was neither forward-looking nor progressive. In 1920 it became the permanent home of one of the great innovators of the twentieth century, the potter Bernard Leach. At the outbreak of the Second World War it provided shelter for a small group of the most progressive painters and sculptors, including notably Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth, already leaders in the advanced art movements of the 1930s, and committed to the principle of abstraction. In the 1940s and 1950s a remarkable group of younger artists came together in and around St Ives, making it a centre of avant-garde art activity. This book is concerned with those artistic events, especially during the years 1939-75, and the larger circumstances in the world of art by which they were affected, or which were affected by them. It describes the singular contribution of St Ives to the art of our time.

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This is the remarkable story of the colony of artists who were inspired by the people, landscape and light of West Cornwall. Now internationally celebrated, they are forever to be associated with the small fishing ports of Newlyn and St Ives. Arriving from the artists' colonies of France, the Barbizon and Pont-Aven, and the painting schools of London and Paris, they set up their studios in the cottages and net lofts overlooking the sea. Here they painted; their subjects centred on the working life and conditions of the people they lived amongst, and the stark beauty of the rugged Cornish landscape. Challenging the accepted styles of the Victorian masters, their bold work, full of light and colour, often drew upon the working life of the fishermen and their families, recording the tragedies and simple pleasures of their lives. In The Shining Sands, Tom Cross records the life and work of these artists, from the earliest arrivals in the 1870s through to the decade preceding the Second World War. In this period the artists' colony grew into one of the most significant art movements of recent times, the influences of which directly inspired the post-war 'modern' movements, and which reverberate even today. The Shining Sands includes almost 100 colour pictures, and 200 images in all, produced by such artists as Walter Langley, Frank Bramley, Stanhope Forbes, Norman Garstin, Elizabeth Forbes, Lamorna Birch, Laura Knight, Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood. The author describes the events and circumstances behind the making of many of the paintings, adding a further dimension to our appreciation of these fine works.

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