Walter Langley

Walter Langley ( born June 8, 1852 in Birmingham, West Midlands, † March 21, 1922 in Penzance, Cornwall ) was an English painter of the late Impressionism and co-founder of the Newlyn School, an artists colony in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Life and work

Langley began his artistic career at the age of 15 years when he became an apprentice to a lithographer Birmingham. After he had completed 21 years of his education, he studied in Kensington Design and received a scholarship. Langley then went back to Birmingham to continue working as a lithographer, spent his spare time but even with intensive studies in painting. Soon after, he gave up the photolithography, to devote himself entirely to painting.

Langley was in 1882 the first artist of the group, who settled in Newlyn, a fishing village in the southwestern English county of Cornwall. Soon followed his friend Edwin Harris. First, Langley benefited little from his growing notoriety, both because of his humble origins and his socialist beliefs, on the other hand, because he mostly painted until 1892 not with oil paints, but in watercolor, because the oil painting at that time enjoyed a much higher reputation. Langley practiced in the genre painting and painted scenes of daily life in the small fishing village, misfortune and tragedy clinging, which occurred more frequently during this time, and showed in his works great empathy for the needs of the residents of Newlyn.

Later Langley's reputation grew considerably, so that he became a member of the Royal Society of Art and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours. One of his pictures was founded in 1898 by Leo Tolstoy in his book What is Art? mentioned and described therein as a beautiful and true work of art. In 1895 he had a major success when he was asked by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, contribute a self-portrait for the Medici collection of representations of famous painters. Today, his work is considered decisive for the Artists' Association of Newlyn School. His work is considered alongside that of Stanhope Forbes as consistent in style and as the most important in the production.