Home from the Fields

Harold Charles Francis Harvey
(1874 – 1941)

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated ‘07.

12” x 16” (30.5 cm x 40.6 cm)

The only principal member of The Newlyn School to have been born in Cornwall, Harvey painted authentic scenes of Cornish rural and coastal life with an intimate knowledge of the area and its people. He was taught firstly by Norman Garstin and then studied in Paris at l’Académie Julian. Influenced by the French rural realism of Jules Bastien-Lepage, Harvey returned from Paris to record the day-to-day lives of the Cornish people. He liked to paint en plein air, in the fields and country lanes, by the harbours and on the beaches near his home. Harvey exhibited at the principal galleries throughout Britain, including 55 works at The Royal Academy. A modest, retiring person, he was popular among his fellow artists and is regarded today as one of the most important painters of The Newlyn School.