The Art House
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The Art House sits in the heart of Penzance, just a stone's throw from Penzance promenade and Mount's Bay. This peaceful retreat is gorgeous, with a lovely private south-west facing courtyard, and the accommodation is reverse level living.
Enter the ground floor kitchen/dining-area, with its stylish fittings, mod-cons and eco-friendly ground source heating system. Head upstairs to the stunning sitting-room where French doors lead outside to the balcony, and you can enjoy the sunset and seclusion. Also, at this level, are two pretty bedrooms, one a twin and one a double, each with lovely linens and comfortable beds. A short passageway leads to a modern shower-room with shower, WC and wash-basin.
This modern, detached property is private and secluded, despite its location in the heart of Penzance. Wander through the town to explore galleries, pubs and restaurants. Head west to Newlyn and Mousehole, or east to Marazion and St Michael's Mount.
The Art House is situated in the Mews behind the home of Walter Langley in Alexandra Road where a remarkable colony of artists who were inspired by the people, landscape and light of West Cornwall. Now internationally celebrated, they are forever to be associated with the small fishing ports of Newlyn and St Ives.
Arriving from the artists' colonies of France, the Barbizon and Pont-Aven, and the painting schools of London and Paris, they set up their studios in the cottages and net lofts overlooking the sea. Here they painted; their subjects centred on the working life and conditions of the people they lived amongst, and the stark beauty of the rugged Cornish landscape. Challenging the accepted styles of the Victorian masters, their bold work, full of light and colour, often drew upon the working life of the fishermen and their families, recording the tragedies and simple pleasures of their lives.
The life and work of these artists, from the earliest arrivals in the 1870s through to the decade preceding the Second World War. In this period the artists' colony grew into one of the most significant art movements of recent times, the influences of which directly inspired the post-war 'modern' movements, and which reverberate even today, produced by such artists as Walter Langley, Frank Bramley, Stanhope Forbes, Norman Garstin, Elizabeth Forbes, Lamorna Birch, Laura Knight, Alfred Munnings, Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood.
From about 1950 a group of younger artists gathered in St Ives and it is with this group, together with Hepworth and Nicholson (until his departure in 1958), that the term St Ives School is particularly associated. As well as a shared interested in abstraction, the St Ives artists were also inspired by the landscape of West Cornwall and used its shapes, forms and colours as a source for much of their work. The principal figures of the St Ives School include Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Paul Feiler, Sir Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, Roger Hilton, Peter Lanyon, Karl Weschke and Bryan Wynter, together with the pioneer modern potter, Bernard Leach.
Today they are celebrated and exhibited just a stones throw away at nearby galleries, The Exchange Penzance, Penlee House, Newlyn Gallery, Tate St Ives, Hepworth St Ives and at so many beautiful sites in Penwith where many worked 'en Plein Air'.
The Art House is a hidden getaway in the heart of Penzance where you can immerse yourself in a peaceful setting, relaxing with a great book, paint a memory or set forth and explore the wonderful wild Penwith Cornwall, which inspired so many artists throughout the centuries with the shining light found nowhere else.
