The Newlyners, be sure of that, did not suspect themselves out of the common. Visitors to Penzance discovered Newlyn as a curious place worth a morning or an afternoon's exploration, but not a place where the polite might stay. That is to say, here is no up-to-date hotel, and the folk are, or were, primitive. Their natural politeness cannot be in question.
Then Mr. Stanhope Forbes, who has since attained to the dignity of "R.A.," found Newlyn and perceived its artistic value. He and Frank Bramley were the founders of what has become famous as the "Newlyn School." They painted fish sales, domestic auctions, village weddings, Christmas-Eve in Penzance, "Hopeless Dawn" in a fisherman's cottage when the fishing-fleet has been storm-tossed, and many another episode in the life of the people, and quite early their success brought about the large artist colonies that have since settled, not only here, but at St. Ives, and Polperro, and many another old-world waterside village in Cornwall, their practice that of the pioneers of Newlyn; for although there are different "schools" of fish, pilchards, mackerel, and other, in Cornish seas, there is only one "school" artistic. Now it is a strange thing that although the Newlyn School is essentially English (or perhaps we should say Cornish) in its subjects, its methods are distinctly French in their origin.
It is nothing that the Newlyn School is that of open-air painting, for the Pre-Raphaelites began to discredit the mere studio-painter so far back as 1848; but the peculiarly broad, frank technique, honestly, and perhaps also ostentatiously, displaying the brush work by which its results are obtained, is a distinct importation from the French schools. It has certainly taken root and thrived well here. This purely technical innovation, owing something, but not much, to the impressionists, was applied to subjects that had rarely ever been selected before, and with equal frankness, just as they presented themselves; so that it became with some critics a reproach to the Newlyners that they had no selective qualities, and no power of composition, and merely rendered what they saw, as crudely as a photograph. To which these new men might have replied that a striving after mere prettiness was not their object, but that they did indeed endeavour to render those things they saw around them, just as they were.
That everyday working clothes and sea kit were worth painting was a surprise to the men of Newlyn, and the especial beauty of a weathered and well-worn dress was not easily revealed to the Newlyn women and girls. Many an artist, here and elsewhere, has been sadly put about by the fishermen who, having vanished for a while to "clean themselves and get a bit tidy-like" have come back in some go-to-meeting or other impossible garb; while legends that painters personally disliked cleanliness and order arose from the despair of some at the seeming impossibility of explaining that, artistically speaking, Sunday frocks, tidy hair, and clean pinners were not improvements upon the usual week-day dishevellment, and that to be bare-legged was sometimes better than to be wearing nice new boots. But to-day every one in Newlyn knows much better than that; all have got some idea of artistic terms and slang, and scarce a man among the blue-jerseyed lot who lean against the railings on the cliff-top between going out to the fishing-grounds and digging the potato-patch but has sat as a model or has watched the progress of a canvas.
In these latter days there is added to the traditional Newlyn industries a newer occupation, which also bids to become in course of time traditional. It is that of posing for artists. Be sure that if you loiter here with anything suspiciously like a sketch-book, and wear something of an artistic appearance, you will be hailed by expectant models.
"Would ye like me to sit for 'ee?"
"You're too tidy, I'm afraid," you perhaps say at a venture; but there is no use in that, for it is immediately met with: "All right, sir; I knows what 'ee want. I'll just goo inside an' put on me old hat an' coat."
He does so, and produces articles battered and covered with the dust and mellow tints of age, and hung, like bottles of old port, with cobwebs.
That part of Mount's Bay in which Newlyn is situated is known as Gwavas Lake. Many years ago, the enterprise and daring of the Cornish miners, who had located a vein of tin, caused the opening of a novel kind of mine at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the shore. The Werra Mine shaft was sunk in an iron caisson to a depth of a hundred feet, and tin to the value of £3,000 was dug out before the courage of the adventurers gave way and the speculation was abandoned.
High on the hillside above and beyond Newlyn stands Paul, less a village than a church presiding over a few farms: all very Irish-looking.