Gallery to showcase two artists from famed Newlyn School

Two new exhibitions are set to open in West Cornwall this autumn. Athwenna Irons reports

- Athwenna Irons

TWO new exhibitions dedicated to members of the famed Newlyn School of Artists are set to open in West Cornwall this autumn.

Works by ceramicist and painter, Biddy Picard and landscape painter, Lamorna Birch, will go on display at the Penlee House Gallery & Museum in Penzance from October through until January 2026.

The first exhibition, titled 'Biddy Picard: Timeless Penwith', features around 30 paintings in a one-room show giving an overview of an artist known both locally and nationally for her highly distinctive evocations of West Cornwall.

Born in 1922 in Derbyshire, Biddy Picard initially trained at Chesterfield School of Art before going on to a classical art training at the Slade during the Second World War, at a time when it had been temporarily relocated to what is now the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. There she excelled in particular at life drawing, winning the top student prize in her second year.