pilgrimage, penzance, and paintings

And we are back in full colour this week.

[Penzance brights]

I’m not a pilgrimage sort of person. But this week it feels almost like I’ve been on one.

[detail of ‘My Kitchen’ (1923), Harold Harvey]

I really, really like Harold Harvey’s paintings,

[detail of ‘The Road to Market’ (1924), Harold Harvey]

and when I discovered this time last year (see my newsletter of 17 September 2023) that Penlee House Gallery in Penzance was planning an exhibition of his work for this summer, I knew I was prepared to come all the way back to the tip of Cornwall to see it.

[detail of ‘August, 1939), Harold Harvey]

I packed my knitting, Adam Bede, and the Harold Harvey catalogue, and we took the train from London Paddington to Penzance. Once upon a time, the Cornish Riviera Express was one of the most evocative and glamorous routes in the UK. In fact, it is still possible to get the night sleeper and wake up in the country’s southernmost station, a solid 1876 granite affair which might have appealed to Monet if he'd not had the Gare Saint-Lazare.

[during filming of a Hard Day’s Night, 1964]

Maybe I’m too much of a romantic when it comes to trains and have watched too many Pathé reels and Hitchcock films, but I had hoped for something like this around lunchtime. Instead, the catering trolley couldn’t get down the carriages crowded with luggage and people having to stand for most of the five and a quarter hour journey and, when it did, there was a distinct lack of Moët et Chandon, GWR monogrammed plates, and silver cruets.

But the views on this journey are amazing. You feel you might fall into the sea as the train hugs the red sandstone cliffs at Dawlish after it’s crossed Brunel’s futuristic lenticular Royal Albert Bridge (1850s) at Saltash. And there are vertigo-inducing viaducts, miracles of Victorian navvy labour over deep Cornish valleys, and fields and fields of beautiful cabbages.

After what’s been a soggy and cool summer, we couldn’t believe our luck with the warm weather, and there is no doubting that Penzance, like so many places in this country, does look better in the sunshine. Even the evening clouds are painterly, as Turner discovered when he captured this scene with St Michael’s Mount in the background in 1811 (minus the spectacular 1935 lido).

[Morrab Library]

We made a minor detour pilgrimage to the Morrab Libary which is pretty much as close to library heaven as you’ll ever get. It’s an old-fashioned subscription library set in sub-tropical gardens, but extremely good value and not at all stuffy and antiquarian. They have the latest novels, lots of Persephone Books titles, newspapers and periodicals, a poetry room, and a room devoted to Cornwall where I would love to spend time researching Nonconformist Cornish chapels (seriously). There’s even a box full of crocheted blankets for readers to borrow in winter when it’s chilly. And tea and biscuits. Heaven, as I said.

Then there’s the Victorian promenade with the Pickle van so you can sit by the sea drinking coffee and have the whole of Mount’s Bay in front of you, with St Michael’s Mount to the left and Newlyn to the right.

Plus fine old buildings such as the Penzance School of Art (who wouldn’t want to fling paint around in here?), the former Penzance Registry Office where Dylan and Caitlin Thomas were married in 1937 (I did not know that), lots of imposing Methodist chapels with galleries and wrought-iron balconies, and houses in bright colours. There’s a great mix of port and fishing history, cobbled streets, long terraces, spa town gentility, and elegant early C19 villas in pale colours.

And so to Harold Harvey (1874-1941) at Penlee House. While the Newlyn School and St Ives artists are still talked about, the truly local and more interesting Harold Harvey gets far less attention. After a Stanhope Forbes-influenced start, he mostly went his own way, didn’t play the art world PR game or court the London art galleries. He was born in Penzance and while others played at being Newlyn artists, he really was one; he stayed there in his house above the little town and painted Penzance, West Penwith, and the local people.

[detail of ‘Laura and Paul Jewell Hill’ (1910), Harold Harvey]

It’s his wonderful use of colour (his greens, oranges, azure blue and lemon yellow in particular), light, textiles, interiors, decorative arts,

[detail of Cornish anemones in ‘Reflections’ (1916), Harold Harvey]

and flowers which really appeals to me. Going round the exhibition several times, I began to see many recurring motifs (stripes, reflections, mirrors, Cryséde scarves), a sense of humour which I hadn’t really noticed before, and a wide range of influences including Vermeer,

[‘The Potato Harvest’ (1910) by Harold Harvey, which has many similarities with J-F Millet’s ‘L’Angélus’]

J-F Millet, the Scottish Colourists, and the Bloomsbury Group.

[‘The Young Menage’ (1932), Harold Harvey]

I’d previously recognised a tension in many of his paintings in which people appear less than comfortable. We know nothing about his private life apart from the fact that he was married to Gertrude, but I’m willing to bet there was something of a love triangle going on. (Oh, the joy of looking at paintings and creating your own narratives.)

[‘Portrait of a girl in a checked blouse’ (1922), Harold Harvey]

One of reasons why Harvey isn’t better known could be because so much of his work is in private collections. So we only get to see reproductions and even then not the whole thing. I had no idea he’d painted frames as well (very Bloomsbury) until I saw several in the exhibition. And just look as this wonderful patterned top - so much of the clothing in his paintings could be part of a Toast collection.

[‘Winter Lemons’ by Sophie Harding]

There are still Penzance artists breaking the mould today. The many commercial art galleries in Penzance and Marazion (go there by open-top bus for full wind-blown effect) sell a lot of pleasant blue seascapes, so Sophie Harding’s brilliantly colourful work stands out, like modern versions of Harold Harvey’s work next to the gently pale Newlyn School paintings.

One of my favourite hymns at primary school was ‘To Be a Pilgrim’ (sung with very flat ‘a’ sounds in ‘disaster’ and ‘Master’). I may not be the sort of pilgrim John Bunyan had in mind, but an art pilgrimage does the soul a lot of good.

Happy Sunday!