Related Images Gallery

A China Clay Pit, Leswidden, Harold Harvey (1874-1941)

Oil on canvas, Newlyn School, 1920 or 1924. This painting shows the harsh, labour-intensive working conditions of a china clay pit. Leswidden China Clay Works, near St Just, was a more primitive works than the larger, more mechanised works in the St Austell area. The pit was closed before 1942. Harold Harvey was one of the few successful artists of the period who was born and raised in Cornwall. He grew up surrounded by the industry he would later paint and counted many of the working people he depicted as friends. He originally studied under Norman Garstin, but also visited Paris as a young man where he was greatly influenced by the Post-Impressionist movement. His earlier work was very much influenced by Stanhope Forbes, though it changed as he grew older, his brushwork becoming less thick and his forms more simple. Some of his later work shows a period stylisation but without the Picasso influences of his contemporaries Ernest and Dod Procter. Harvey continued to work right up to his death in 1941

© RIC

Suffragettes Pankhurst and Gawthorpe Rutland 1907

Christabel Pankhurst and Mary Gawthorpe in the Market Place, Uppingham, holding a meeting during the 1907 Rutland bye-election. The campaign saw Mary Gawthorpe the victim of dirty tricks by supporters of the Liberal candidate, W.F Lyons. Sylvia Pankhurst later gave an account of an incident when Mary was struck on the head by a pot-egg (a china dummy egg) and knocked unconscious. Youths were apparently paid by a wealthy Liberal supporter to hurl sweets at suffragette speakers (see Votes for Women 6th August 1909) Polling was held on11th Juneand the Conservative was duly elected. Date: 1907

© The March of the Women Collection / Mary Evans Picture Library

Charlestown harbour and shipping, Cornwall. Around 1914

Charlestown harbour looking out to sea. The harbour is full of a mixture of both steam and sail shipping. SS Westdale on the east quay, (left of picture) is steel built and screw driven. She was built in South Shields in 1911 and owned in Liverpool. The schooner, Belmont, built in Whitstable in 1895 and owned in Faversham is alongside the west quay, (right of picture). Alongside the east quay is the steel built and screw driven SS Central, whose funnel and bridge structure can be seen through the masts and rigging. She was built and owned in Kiel in 1884. On the left, in front of the cottages, can be seen the covered gantry carrying tram rails and loading chutes of the underground tram way that carried China clay from the large clay dry a few hundred yards away and out of picture to load the ships. Photographer: Herbert Hughes

© From the collection of the RIC