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Lot Essay
In 1923 Forbes returned to what had been one of his most important early subjects - that of fishing in the coastal waters around Newlyn. Here two fishermen, older and younger, perhaps father and son, have taken a young woman and girl 'whiffling' on a sunny summer's afternoon. The painter observes the return of this 'expedition', as the lad steers his craft back into the harbour shallows with a laden basket - much as the young man did in Forbes's monumental canvas, The Lighthouse, 1892 (Manchester City Art Galleries). The general activity of line-fishing is best described in Newlyn, Cornwall, 1906 (Ferens Art Gallery, Hull) a work of 1906 which contains a similar youth wearing a white sailcloth smock and red bonnet, accompanied by a boy and an 'old salt'. In the foreground, as here, is the catch. A study of the two fishing boats on the left, now known as Boats at Anchor, reveals that at low tide, they would be beached and the foreground in the present picture would in fact become a sandy bank as the sea retreated.
The painter has however exchanged the failing light and dark tonalities of Newlyn for the bright sunshine of the present work. In this regard, the closest precedent for its shrill colour harmonies is Chadding in Mount's Bay (Worcester City Museums), his principal contribution to the Royal Academy in 1902. In The Fishermen's Expedition, however, the boat is much closer to the viewer, and it dramatically cuts the left side of the canvas as it comes to rest. It was a setting that Forbes knew more intimately than any other Newlyn painter. During the previous thirty years the harbour had, after the construction of the lighthouse, been radically extended to take steam trawlers, and house one of the biggest fishing fleets in Britain. The North Pier, seen on the left in the background of The Fishermen's Expedition, was opened in 1894 to shield the fleet from storms that swept into Mount's Bay, and off to the right, unseen, were the old slips used for launching smaller craft.
More fundamentally, from the artist's point of view, there had been important changes in style and subject matter in the work produced by Cornish artists over the years. With the arrival of Harold and Laura Knight, more metropolitan motifs of bathers and middle class interiors had been introduced. Forbes's monumental Newlyners were at first scaled back in the narrative genre scenes of Harold Harvey (see lot 14), often involving children at play, and by 1910, even Harvey had more or less abandoned them. All of the second generation members of the school rejected the dour tonalism of early Newlyn painting and were keen to embrace Impressionism. Yet only Forbes and Langley remained true to its original subject matter - that of the hard lives of fishermen's families. Even in 1920 they continued to provide inspiration for works such as The Saffron Cake (Private Collection). At the same time it is often forgotten that Forbes, as much as anyone, led the way in adopting a more Impressionist palette, and when he painted The Fishermen's Expedition, it functioned as a re-statement of all the essential beliefs of the school of which he was the undisputed leader.
KMc.
The painter has however exchanged the failing light and dark tonalities of Newlyn for the bright sunshine of the present work. In this regard, the closest precedent for its shrill colour harmonies is Chadding in Mount's Bay (Worcester City Museums), his principal contribution to the Royal Academy in 1902. In The Fishermen's Expedition, however, the boat is much closer to the viewer, and it dramatically cuts the left side of the canvas as it comes to rest. It was a setting that Forbes knew more intimately than any other Newlyn painter. During the previous thirty years the harbour had, after the construction of the lighthouse, been radically extended to take steam trawlers, and house one of the biggest fishing fleets in Britain. The North Pier, seen on the left in the background of The Fishermen's Expedition, was opened in 1894 to shield the fleet from storms that swept into Mount's Bay, and off to the right, unseen, were the old slips used for launching smaller craft.
More fundamentally, from the artist's point of view, there had been important changes in style and subject matter in the work produced by Cornish artists over the years. With the arrival of Harold and Laura Knight, more metropolitan motifs of bathers and middle class interiors had been introduced. Forbes's monumental Newlyners were at first scaled back in the narrative genre scenes of Harold Harvey (see lot 14), often involving children at play, and by 1910, even Harvey had more or less abandoned them. All of the second generation members of the school rejected the dour tonalism of early Newlyn painting and were keen to embrace Impressionism. Yet only Forbes and Langley remained true to its original subject matter - that of the hard lives of fishermen's families. Even in 1920 they continued to provide inspiration for works such as The Saffron Cake (Private Collection). At the same time it is often forgotten that Forbes, as much as anyone, led the way in adopting a more Impressionist palette, and when he painted The Fishermen's Expedition, it functioned as a re-statement of all the essential beliefs of the school of which he was the undisputed leader.
KMc.