Circle of John Anthony Park RBA ROI Cornish Boats

An original 1930s oil painting, Circle of John Anthony Park RBA ROI, Cornish Boats.

This wonderful Cornish oil dates from around the late 1930s and evokes the work of the celebrated St Ives painter John Anthony Park (1880–1962). Park was a leading figure in the St Ives art colony during the interwar years, best known for his impressionistic depictions of boats in St Ives harbour painted ‘en plein-air'. His work and that of his contemporary Robert Borlase Smart (1881–1947) are the two most important links between the more traditional St Ives artists and the modernists.

Painted on C. Roberson & Co Ltd canvas (which dates from the period 1937 to 1939, when Roberson's was at 101–104, Park Street, London, NW1), this work shares characteristics with Park, including the blocky patchwork of Cornish cottages, with their dabs of paint representing windows, and the striped, single-masted sailing dinghies on the water. The use of colour, harmonious but with hints of post-impressionistic experimentation—in the purple-tinged browns and blue and green windows—also resembles Park's use of colour.

John Anthony Park had encountered first-hand the Impressionists and contemporary Post-Impressionists in Paris in 1905. Having moved to St Ives from his native Preston in 1899 aged just eighteen, Park studied at Julius Olsson and Algernon Talmage’s School of Painting, 1902–1904, where he was considered their star pupil. Olsson encouraged Park to go to Paris, where he enrolled at The Académie Colarossi under Auguste Delecluse and was a contemporary of Modigliani. He also spent time at French artists’ colonies, such as Concarneau in Brittany. This had a lasting effect upon his colour palette, paint handling and ability to capture light.

p>On his return to Cornwall, living first at Polperro and then St Ives from 1921, Park went on to be a founding member of the St Ives Society of Artists in 1927, becoming probably their best known member and most highly rated artist. He was a regular exhibitor at Royal Academy, the Paris Salon and St Ives Society of Artists. In the 1930s he relocated to London, where his studio in Maida Vale was close to that of Dorothea Sharp and Marcella Smith, and he became a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. But in 1940 St Ives drew him back on a more permanent basis and he remained there until 1957.

Park's impressionist style was recognised by many of the modernists as the most advanced of the traditional St Ives painters, with Sven Berlin rating him one of the best English colourists and unsurpassed as a painter of light. The post-impressionist tendencies in much of his work is expressed through Park's own summation that 'Colour is everything. Anyone can be taught line, but you cannot teach a feeling for colour.'

John Anthony Park's works can be found in numerous public collections, including Tate, St Ives Guildhall, Manchester Art Gallery, Salford Museum & Art Gallery, Brighton and Hove Museums, Southampton City Art Gallery, Harris Museum & Art Gallery and Ulster Museum, amongst others.

Presented in a painted wood frame with gilt slip.

Image size: 38.5 x 49cm. Frame size: 49.5 x 60cm.