A Squabble of Seagulls...

The oil painting above - Line Fishing Season © the artist's estate. Image credit: The Box, Plymouth - is that of an artist that I had never heard of until visiting the current exhibition Birds:The Art of Cornwall’s Birdlife at Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance. Although not himself Cornish, Charles Walter Simpson (1885–1971), spent a considerable amount of time living in Cornwall, arriving in Newlyn in 1906 and later going on to set up an art colony in St Ives with his wife, portrait artist Ruth Alison. He specialised in animal and bird painting, having turned to art in his teenage years when a riding accident prevented him from following his father's military career. The couple went back to London in the 1920s where he pursued other artistic ventures, each meeting with great success, but returned to Cornwall thereafter, settling in Lamorna and finally in Penzance.

His squabbling, squawking seagulls are so accurate that they could almost have been captured somewhere along the coast today (or further inland, for that matter). Wheeling Gulls, Glittering Water (1944) reflects Simpson's skill in recreating the essence of the creature in question, without resorting to slavish detail to represent reality. Seen up close, as in the detail from Simpson's Seagulls (1910-20) below, the brushwork is broad and the paint loosely applied and yet the effect is astounding as we take in the birds in their 'yelling multitudes', according to his student friend. Simpson remarked that a painter of living creatures should possess 'a naturalist's knowledge...but an equal facility for forgetting it'. In his St Ives studio, he displayed numerous stuffed bird specimens that enabled him to study the anatomy, plumage and poise of his subjects. However, he underlined his opinion that an artist should portray wild birds 'as an Impressionist treats a landscape; in their surroundings of space and light'.

Apparently, he studied the gulls around Penzance and Newlyn by luring them with buckets of fish offal that would sufficiently occupy them as he caught their likeness as they circled around, deftly skimming the water, slicing the air in flight.

Of course, other artists' work was displayed, again capturing that unique seagull aspect. Tucking a School of Pilchards by Percy Robert Craft (1856–1934) is a vast painting, of which the above is just one small detail. Interestingly, some of the fishermen portrayed in this work are thought to have been Newlyn rioters, from the 1896 protests that broke out in reaction to the fishing practices of the Lowestoft fleet (from Suffolk) that threatened to undermine the livelihood of the locals.

The soaring, gliding flight of gulls is likewise caught by Samuel 'Lamorna' Birch - regarded as the 'father figure' of the second generation of Newlyn artists - in his Tol Pedn (1907). You can almost hear the birds screeching as they swirl above the waves, preparing to plunge at fish below and to peck off the competition with poised beaks. That same energy is vividly present in the bas-relief Scavengers of the Sea (1973) by Rosamunde Fletcher (1914 - 1998).

The exhibition goes on until the 4th October 2025, and features many other bird species but the gulls were perhaps the most spectacular and above all, timeless in their essence!