When I came to Newlyn Art Gallery in the late summer of 1956 to take up the post of Curator and Secretary of the Newlyn Society of Artists, I was no stranger to the area. My family home had always been at Redruth, where my father was the Rector, and I had been a student at the Redruth, Penzance, and St Ives schools of art.

By a coincidence I had also been a patient at the Bolitho Convalescent Home, on New Road, Newlyn, when I developed pulmonary tuberculosis in the early 1950s. On my daily convalescent walks I had visited the gallery, which in those days was more like a museum than a showplace for contemporary art. The walls were literally covered with pictures of the sunshine and seagull variety, with too many anonymous portraits, cows, and bluebell woods. It did not appear that the gallery was much visited.

The fortunes of Newlyn's art colony had risen and fallen over the years, since its foundation in 1893. Periods of praiseworthy activity seemed to be followed by regular periods of decline. Many illustrious names came and went. Members of the Newlyn Society grew old and died, moved away, and in some cases embarked on a different career. By the 1950s the Society was relying upon its earlier reputation, when the names of Alfred Munnings, Laura Knight, Dod Procter and Lamorna Birch were a regular feature at the Royal Academy. Across the peninsula in the St Ives art colony were very different names, and a very different kind of art.

In 1956 an advertisement appeared in the "New Statesman and Nation" for a new Curator and Secretary of the Society. The salary was £100 a year, with a rent-free flat beneath the gallery, a small commission from art sales, and a free bag of coal. However the main attraction was that the gallery was only open for six months of the year, leaving the curator half of the year free to pursue personal interests, which in my case was painting. I applied for the post and was appointed. When my wife, together with our infant son, joined me a few weeks later, the Society got two curators for the price of one. We had no private means of support, apart from a very small War Disability Pension, and such money as I could make from occasional sales of my own pictures. Times were hard, but we were determined to make a success of the gallery and to instill some life into it.

I cannot claim to be the sole catalyst that sparked Newlyn on a livelier phase, as Mrs Eileen Hunt, my predecessor, had done much to revive the Society after its wartime hibernation. By hard work and much charm she managed to enlist the support of a significant group of modern artists, who included Peter Lanyon, Paul Feiler, John Armstrong, John Tunnard, Ithell Colquhoun, Jack Pender, Alexander Mackenzie and others. The work of these artists was, of course, hardly viewed with enthusiasm by the older members of the Society, and I discovered that undercover approaches were being made by some members to the St Ives Society of Artists, to see if the amalgamation of the two societies was possible.

This fortunately came to nothing, but certainly the financial state of the Society at Newlyn was precarious (in fact there was not sufficient money to pay my salary when I first arrived), so that members were right to be concerned as to whether the Society could continue as an independent body.

I realised from the outset that it was essential for the Society to obtain an annual grant, either from the local authority, from some philanthropic body, or from the Arts Council, otherwise the Society would cease to exist and the gallery would close. The reputation of the Society at this time was not high as far as the Arts Council were concerned, and they made it clear to me that something had to be done about this before they would consider giving any financial aid. I can see, on reflection, that it was not generally appreciated how critical the situation was at this time.

I was convinced that we must first find a way of engaging the support of younger and more progressive artists, not an easy task when the existing members enjoyed life membership and were far from anxious to encourage the "moderns", by whom they felt threatened. Stories of the upheavals in St Ives, because of the "A" and "B" rulings, of resignations and stormy committee meetings had reached Newlyn. It was obvious that we must proceed with caution, but proceed we must if the Society was to survive.

It therefore seemed that the only immediate change that was possible, without giving offence to the older members at Newlyn, was to modernise the interior of the building, rather than the Society. That could come later.

By making use of the front downstairs room and initiating new activities such as a film society, this gave the possibility of one-man shows and social occasions. I thought that this would give the gallery a role approaching that of an arts centre, and I suspected might interest the Arts Council. In fact it was at this time that the latter gave us screens and stands, that not only extended the hanging space but allowed us to show pottery more effectively.

St Ives had always received more publicity than Newlyn in the media, so I set about interesting BBC radio, television, the local press, and national magazines devoted to the arts. It was fortuitous that at the very moment that I had begun to establish contact with the media, the local council decided to demolish “The Narrows”, a compact and attractive group of buildings above the old harbour, in a misguided road-widening scheme. This provoked a public outcry, together with protests from the artists' community in particular. Many people recalled a similar attempt back in the 1930s, when much of old Newlyn was destroyed, and the residents were transferred to hygienic but unlovely council houses at the top of the hill, and they were determined that this would not occur again.

By a stroke of luck, the young TV reporter who came to interview me at the gallery about the art colony's opposition to the scheme subsequently became Head of BBC News in the region, and then took up the same post at Bristol. He was a richly rewarding contact in the years that followed.

Whilst our public relations were developing, we embarked on a refurbishment of the gallery interior, and the placing of new signboards and notice boards outside. The interior had always been reminiscent of a swimming pool, with rows of wooden battens on which the pictures were hung, stretching around the walls. This system was reasonably effective, but not very attractive.  Removing these battens, filling holes, and painting the gallery walls was a lengthy task. In the past such work, and the hanging of exhibitions, was carried out by local artisans, paid for by the Society. This seemed to me to be excessively extravagant in view of the critical financial position of the Society. The “gentleman’s art club” attitude was therefore abandoned, for a more practical approach in which the Curator and members of the Society turned-to with paint-brushes, screwdrivers and hammers, and carried out the work themselves.

Another communal activity was the annual arts ball, which became an incredibly popular event, involving members not only in the ball itself, with its fancy dress costumes, but in the decorations as well, which became very ambitious as time went on. All of this helped to give the Society a new sense of identity; but what Newlyn particularly lacked were some kind of regular events throughout the long winter months. I had always wanted to run a film society, and here we had an empty gallery from October to March, which would be an ideal venue. I put this proposition to the Society and it was readily accepted.

We first purchased a number of folding chairs to accommodate the audience, had shutters installed so that the gallery could be blacked out, and found a willing projectionist in the secretary of the Leach pottery, who was later responsible for encouraging film enthusiasts from St Ives to come over and join us. Even if the great classics of the international cinema were not always as gripping as we had hoped, nevertheless the Film Society was a great success and a welcome entertainment during the winter months. Being now organised for showing films, we were able to act as host to the Arts Council’s annual touring art-film show, and I think this may have been politically a wise move, as it was around this time that we obtained a regular Arts Council grant. To a few of the older members this was equivalent to supping with the devil, but there is no doubt that the grant not only came at an opportune moment, but enabled us to pursue a more forward-looking policy.

The lower room at the front of the gallery was not, strictly speaking, part of the curator's flat, and although it had been used intermittently over the years, in general it seemed to be a wasted area. It is true that John Armstrong had worked there for a time on a vast mural for the ceiling of Bristol Council House, and that the painter Jeremy Le Grice had also used the room as a studio, but the Society had not really made use of it and this seemed regrettable. It was largely a matter of access as the only entry was through the Curator's flat. When the Penzance Public Library indicated that they were prepared to sell a spiral staircase that they no longer needed for ten pounds, this seemed an ideal opportunity to install it in the gallery, by opening up the floor, which we promptly did.

This simple operation provided us with an additional gallery, suitable for one-man shows, for extensions of the Gallery's exhibitions, and other activities. A charge was made for the use of this gallery so that the Society benefited in more ways than one. It was indeed in this room that the poet W S Graham held poetry readings, that life-classes took place, that slide- shows were held, and a number of artists had their first one-man shows there.

Whilst the Gallery was extending its hanging space, the Society was enhancing its reputation in the matter of exhibitions, with the prestigious Early Newlyn Exhibition of 1958, with exhibitions of Newlyn Painters at Falmouth Polytechnic Gallery in 1958, and again at Plymouth City Art Gallery, with the African and Oceanic Sculpture Exhibition of 1960, and a Newlyn Exhibition at Ostend in 1963. The Early Newlyn Exhibition was of particular importance as a homage to the painters who established Newlyn as an art colony in the first place. It also attracted the attention of local people who had never set foot in the gallery before, and because this was a travelling exhibition initiated by Newlyn, it spread the name of Newlyn farther afield.

During the late 50s and 60s the number of exhibitors greatly increased and the quality of the work improved as well. In fact there were few artists in the West Penwith area who did not show at Newlyn at one time or another. The Gallery also attracted staff from Falmouth School of Art and members of the newly formed Porthleven Group. There were other exhibitors from Polperro, Looe, and the Plymouth area. Newlyn artists were also showing at the Fore Street Gallery and the Sail Loft Gallery in St Ives. This was a particularly fruitful and interesting period.

When I arrived at Newlyn, from the earlier generation of Newlyn artists, only Charles Simpson, Alethea Garstin, Dod Procter, Midge Bruford and Mornie Kerr remained, as far as I can recall. Garstin, Procter and Kerr played an active part on committees and in the life of the Society. Simpson was less in evidence but continued to enter large canvases in the Society’s exhibitions.

The artists whom I would refer to as “traditional” and who showed regularly at Newlyn, included (as far as I can recall), George Lambourn, Charles Breaker, Barbara Singleman, Marjorie Mort, Denys Law, Mary Duncan, Stuart Armfield, Mornie Kerr, Midge Bruford, Inez and Bouverie Hoyton, Angus Brent, Sybil Mullen Glover and many others. Dod Procter, Alethea Garstin and Charles Simpson were of course figurative painters also, but far superior to the rest.

Of the “moderns”, regular exhibitors included Peter Lanyon, Paul Feiler, John Tunnard, Ithell Colquhoun, Jack Pender, Clifford and Patricia Fishwick, Alan Lowndes, Patrick Hayman, Alexander Mackenzie, John Miller, Nancy Wynne-Jones, Jeremy Le Grice, Margo Maeckelberghe, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Denis Mitchell, Tony O'Malley, and others too numerous to mention.

These lists are in no sense comprehensive, but with much of the Gallery archives and exhibition catalogues destroyed, it is impossible to present more than an approximate picture of those who valiantly supported the Gallery and Society at this time.

Much has been made of the visit of Mark Rothko to the Gallery in 1958 and he is probably the most important visitor, but there were other distinguished artists who came from the USA and included Newlyn on their itinerary, well-known dealers and collectors too. Important figures from the theatre, from the literary and musical worlds also came, indicating that Newlyn was becoming increasingly well known.

In spite of financial crises, recessions, two world wars, and profound changes in the art world as a whole, Newlyn continues to survive. It is perhaps a tribute to the founding fathers of the colony, who drafted the original constitution and laid down the principles on which the Society should be run, that it is still in existence, and actually flourishing.

Michael Canney – August 11th 1995