A Journey Through West Cornwall and The Cornish Paintings of Martina Thomas 27 January – 20 April 2024
This Spring Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance is staging two exhibitions to run concurrently. The first is a one-room show of Cornish landscapes by artist Martina Thomas (1924 – 1995). Born in east London, and living most of her life in Sussex, Martina was inspired by her visits to Cornwall with husband Eric Mellon and their children.
Martina was devoted to her faithful Fauve-inspired technique and representation which she observed throughout her life, culminating in paintings with an application of high oil colour using a palette knife.
In celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth and to mark her dedication to painting the landscapes, harbours and fishermen of Cornwall, Penlee House has worked with Martina’s family to curate a selection of her Cornish artworks. The show will include rarely exhibited examples of her later work alongside works by Martina held in the collections of Penlee House and Falmouth Art Gallery.
To complement this, our second exhibition, Journey through West Cornwall, will depict places such as Marazion, Penzance, Newlyn, Mousehole, Lamorna, Land’s End, Sennen, Zennor and St Ives. Featuring urban, rural and coastal landscapes and lesser-known topographical works from the Penlee House collection, we’ve curated a selection of watercolours, oils and photographs celebrating the local surroundings.
Penlee House Curator Katie Herbert said “Martina Thomas painted throughout her life and her passion for art and the Cornish Landscape shines through her work. A Journey Through West Cornwall will be an opportunity to show visitors how the local landscape has altered over the past 160 years, or indeed, to what extent things have remained the same and would have been familiar sights all those years ago”.
