The Bathers

Born in 1858, this talented genre and portrait painter studied art in London, Florence and Paris. On his return to England he settled in his native Cornwall, first at Newlyn, already a centre for French cell plein-air painting, and later in Falmouth, where he bought a boat. His style, bold and realistic, was much admired for its feeling of sea and sunlight, and is well-suited to his scenes of rugged life on the Cornish coast.

He was also an industrious painter of male nudes, and his many pictures and sketches of this type caused alarm at Victorian exhibitions.