Harold Harvey - Orange Sellers, Newlyn [c.1907]

Harold Harvey - Orange Sellers, Newlyn [c.1907], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Harold Harvey’s seemingly innocent depiction of girls selling oranges to a young fisherman carries a hidden message that reveals important social concerns in Edwardian Britain. He first tackled the subject in 1905 in The Orange Seller (Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro), a picture of a girl seated in a dark interior with a basket of oranges. This visual idea was taken out into the open air and in the present example, placed in the busy ambience of Newlyn Harbour. Here, his viewpoint took in the waterfront, a section of the North Pier and the gentle slope of Paul Hill running down to Wherry Town, which is off to the right. Along with neighbouring Mousehole, this was a favourite setting between 1905 and 1908. However the encounter he depicts contains a more complex message. Oranges remained an exotic fruit in rural areas in the Edwardian period

[Oil on canvas, 30.5 x 40.6 cm]

Harold Harvey - Bathers [1913]

Harold Harvey - Bathers [1913], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

As the only member of the Newlyn School who was actually a native of Cornwall, Harold Harvey painted scenes of the activities he saw taking place around him every day and was less interested in illustrating any sort of social commentary on the locals’ way of life.

In its depiction of the simple pleasures of boyhood, this sunlit scene of boys bathing amongst the rocks was almost certainly inspired by Harvey’s own childhood experiences, but it is nonetheless an unusual subject for the artist and may have been inspired by similar works by Henry Scott Tuke, who worked at the time in nearby Falmouth. However, Tuke’s pictures generally focus on male physiognomy, and how it is transformed by the various effects of sunlight and shade, while Harvey’s more purely atmospheric study appears to be more concerned with capturing the warm and contrast of sunlight and the simple joie de vivre it inevitably engenders in the English soul. In this respect, the work is somewhat similar to Laura Knight’s early work in Newlyn.

[Oil on canvas, 48 x 54 cm]

Harold Harvey - Out to Sea

Harold Harvey - Out to Sea, a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Harold Harvey (Penzance, Cornwall, May 20, 1874 - May 19, 1941) was a British artist. He exhibited at the Newlyn Gallery and major provincial galleries, and had his first London show in 1913. Harvey’s last decade displayed all the remarkable abilities he had developed, and the wide range of his subject matter which included interiors, portraits, landscapes, religious themes, and the industrial landscape of Cornwall. In 1938 he featured in an article in Picture Post about the artistic colony at Newlyn. He continued painting up to his death.

[Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm]