The letter

The Letter is a fine example of the paintings from Tayler’s Newlyn years, with its beautifully observed, subtly-lit interior. After studying at the Slade and in Paris, Chevallier Tayler spent the summer of 1882 in Devon, and in 1884 he joined the flourishing artists’ colony at Newlyn in Cornwall, remaining there, on and off, until 1895. Tayler painted the residents of Newlyn and Boulogne (which he visited in 1890) with the painterly, square-brush technique of his fellow Newlyn artists, such as Stanhope Forbes and Harold Harvey.