Cover images :
Front : Old Sea Dogs
Back : The Sunday School Treat
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This is the first part of a two part biography of William Holt Yates Titcomb
(1858-1930), produced to accompany the 2003 Titcomb Retrospective at Penlee
House Gallery & Museum, Penzance. Titcomb was an acclaimed figure
painter, who had 44 works hung at the Royal Academy, and whose work is
represented in Public Galleries in Toronto, Nottingham, Bristol, Truro,
Doncaster, Oldham, Southport, Dudley and the V & A.
This first part covers his life until 1908. Although born in Cambridge on 22nd
February 1858, Titcomb was bought up in Lambeth where his father, the Reverend
Jonathan Holt Titcomb, was vicar. He attended Westminster School, where a
drawing of a madrigal society was noticed by Sir Edmund Poynter and, so
encouraged, he studied art at South Kensington, winning a prize in 1878, and at
Antwerp under Charles Verlat in 1879. At the end of 1880, he travelled to Burma
where his father was the first Bishop of Rangoon and the way he overcame the
difficulties he experienced in painting the Burmese and became known as 'The
Royal Artist' are set out in an illustrated article in The Graphic
(19/12/1885). The oil paintings from this trip, some of which are in their
original ornate Burmese frames (Bristol), are highly finished, intricate works,
capturing the exotic colours of Burmese dress and tropical fruits. Titcomb
certainly believed that his visit taught him a new set of colour values.
On his return, he went to Paris to study at Julian's Academy under Boulanger and
Lefebvre and it is highly likely that during his time in Antwerp and Paris, he
will have met many of the other young British artists who were to become
colleagues in Cornwall. However, Titcomb decided to pursue yet further study at
the new Bushey School of Painting, set up by Hubert Herkomer in 1883. Titcomb
was one of the initial intake and stayed for the full two years. The
socio-realism of his later work indicates that Herkomer was a major influence.
His first Royal Academy exhibit in 1886, Fresh This Morning, depicting a
fish stall in a continental market square, not only confirms that Titcomb
travelled abroad, probably to Brittany, after finishing at Bushey, but also that
he was already painting Newlyn type scenes in the French manner. It is no
surprise then that, in 1887, having become more financially independent
following the death of his father, he settled in St Ives.
Titcomb's reputation as one of the leading members of the Cornish art community
was made by Primitive Methodists at Prayer, St Ives (Dudley Art Gallery),
which was exhibited at the RA in 1889 and won a medal at the Paris Salon in
1890. It went on to win medals at Chicago in 1893 and at the Franco-British
Exhibition in 1908. Due to the hazards of their livelihood, the Cornish
fishermen relied heavily on their religious beliefs, calling their faith "the
best and brightest part of life".
This aspect of the fisherfolk's lives is largely ignored by the other Newlyn
School artists, but Titcomb, unconcerned about the uncommerciality of the
subject, returned to the theme repeatedly. Piloting Her Home (RA 1894,
Paris 1895) (Toronto) and A Mariner's Sunday School (RA 1899) (Doncaster)
both again feature the St Ives Primitive Methodist congregation, whereas A
Pilot (RA 1905) and The Church in Cornwall: A Rogation Day Procession
(RA 1906) (Cheltenham) demonstrate the impact on the local fishermen of the
young curate, Bernard Walke, whose strong Anglo-Catholic beliefs were to result
in such controversy later at St Hilary.
Titcomb also produced some typical 'Newlyn' subjects. Old Sea Dogs (RA
1891, Paris 1892, Chicago 1893), depicted on the front cover of the book, is a
real tour de force painted boldly in the French manner, and shows three
old fishermen sitting on a bench on the harbour beach, lost in their memories.
It was bought by Nottingham Castle Museum from the Cornish Artists exhibition at
Nottingham in 1894. Jubilee Day, St Ives (Oldham), depicting St Ives harbour decorated
with bunting and streamers for Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1897, was originally
not accepted for the RA but was resubmitted successfully in 1900 under the title
Good News from the Front, shortly after the town celebrated in similar
fashion the relief of Ladysmith in the Boer War. Till Death Us Do Part
(RA 1893) (originally Dusseldorf) is an archetypal Newlyn School death bed
scene, but free from the excessive sentimentality that characterises much of
Langley's treatment of this theme.
Titcomb's desire to avoid repeating scenes or themes was helped by the fact
that, on his father's death, he inherited property in Wickersley in Yorkshire.
Most years, he spent several months there, painting local industrial scenes and,
in these, he again demonstrated his concern for the plight of the poor and the
conditions under which they had to work. The Wealth of England : The Bessemer
process of making steel (RA 1897) (Sheffield Industrial Museum), which was painted
amidst great discomfort on the spot in a Rotherham steel works over a period of
three months, was included in the Victorian Vision Exhibition at the V&A
in 2000 and was perhaps inspired by Stanhope Forbes' Forging the Anchor..
Titcomb married a fellow artist, Jessie Morison, in 1892 and their children,
Frank and Loveday, were born in 1898 and 1900 respectively. Believing German
education to be superior at that time, they decided to move to Dusseldorf in
1905, where Titcomb continued to paint major figure paintings, but, with the
rise of nationalism in Germany, they decided returned to England in 1909.
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