Walter Langley
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and founder of the Newlyn School
Newlyn School
The Newlyn School is a term used to describe an art colony of artists based in or near to Newlyn, a fishing village adjacent to Penzance, Cornwall, from the 1880s until the early 20th century. The establishment of the Newlyn School was reminiscent of the Barbizon School in France, where artists...
of plein air artists. He was born in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and his father was a journeyman
Journeyman
A journeyman is someone who completed an apprenticeship and was fully educated in a trade or craft, but not yet a master. To become a master, a journeyman had to submit a master work piece to a guild for evaluation and be admitted to the guild as a master....
tailor
Tailor
A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...
. At 15 he was apprenticed to a lithographer
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
. At 21 he won a scholarship to South Kensington and he studied designing there for two years. The sometimes highly ornate work is mainly in gold and silver and in a Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
style. He returned to Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
but took up painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
full time, and in 1881 was elected an Associate of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. In the same year he was offered £500 for a year's work by a Mr Thrupp (a Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
photographer). With this money he and his family moved to Newlyn
Newlyn
Newlyn is a town and fishing port in southwest Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.Newlyn forms a conurbation with the neighbouring town of Penzance and is part of Penzance civil parish...
where he was one of the first artists to settle.
Politically left wing for his era, he was noted for his social realist portrayals of working class figures, particularly fishermen and their families. He was a supporter of Charles Bradlaugh
Charles Bradlaugh
Charles Bradlaugh was a political activist and one of the most famous English atheists of the 19th century. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866.-Early life:...
, a radical socialist politician. Many of his paintings reflect his sympathy with the working class fisher-folk amongst whom he lived. One of the best known is his 1883 For Men Must Work and Women Must Weep (City Museums and Art Gallery, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
) based on Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...
's poem The Three Fishers
Three Fishers
"Three Fishers" is a poem and a folk song written in 1851. The original poem was written by English poet, novelist and preacher, Charles Kingsley. It was first set to music by English composer John Hullah shortly thereafter...
(1851).
Although one of the first to settle in the Newlyn artists' colony Newlyn School
Newlyn School
The Newlyn School is a term used to describe an art colony of artists based in or near to Newlyn, a fishing village adjacent to Penzance, Cornwall, from the 1880s until the early 20th century. The establishment of the Newlyn School was reminiscent of the Barbizon School in France, where artists...
, Langley initially benefited little from its growing fame, partly because of his working class origins and partly because until 1892 he painted largely in watercolour rather than the more prestigious medium of oils
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
. but his early training in lithography gives his paintings a detail and texture that show his technical skills.
Later in his career his reputation grew. One of Langley's paintings was singled out as "a beautiful and true work of art" by Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
in his book What is Art?, while in 1895 Langley was invited by the Uffizi
Uffizi
The Uffizi Gallery , is a museum in Florence, Italy. It is one of the oldest and most famous art museums of the Western world.-History:...
to contribute a self portrait to hang alongside those of Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
, Rubens
Rubens
Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens , the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens Rubens is often used to refer to Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Flemish artist.Rubens may also refer to:- People :Family name* Paul Rubens (composer) Rubens is...
and Rembrandt in their collection of portraits of great artists.Today his work is considered "vital to the image of the Newlyn School
Newlyn School
The Newlyn School is a term used to describe an art colony of artists based in or near to Newlyn, a fishing village adjacent to Penzance, Cornwall, from the 1880s until the early 20th century. The establishment of the Newlyn School was reminiscent of the Barbizon School in France, where artists...
" and "alongside Stanhope Forbes
Stanhope Forbes
Stanhope Alexander Forbes R.A., , was an artist and member of the influential Newlyn school of painters...
... the most consistent in style and substantial in output".
External links
- Biography (Birmingham museums and art gallery)
- Works by Langley (Penlee Gallery, Cornwall)
- Walter Langley online (Artcyclopedia)
- Short biography of Langley (Bob Speel's website)