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Artist: Edwin Harris (1855-1906) Title: The Fisherman Signature: signed 'Edwin Harris' lower left Medium: oil on canvas Size: 53.40 x 42cm (21 x 16.5in) Framed Size: 72 x 60.6cm (28.3 x 23.9in) Provenance: Sotheby's, London, 25th January 2007 lot 115; Private Collection a#morebtn { color: #de1d01; } a#morebtn:hover { cursor: pointer;} Edwin Harris was an early member of the Newlyn School, a group of painters who in the late nineteenth century gravitated to Cornwall, where they painted Realist scenes of life in fishing villages and seaports. In this evocative canvas, Harris depicts a bearded fisherman, wearing a white smock and so... Read more Edwin Harris Lot 61 - 'The Fisherman' Estimate: €6,000 - €9,000 Edwin Harris was an early member of the Newlyn School, a group of painters who in the late nineteenth century gravitated to Cornwall, where they painted Realist scenes of life in fishing villages and seaports. In this evocative canvas, Harris depicts a bearded fisherman, wearing a white smock and sou'wester hat, pausing as he smokes a pipe. On the wall behind the fisherman hang blocks and rigging for a lugger. The room is simple and austere, its walls panelled in planks of wood. Although seated in semi-darkness, the fisherman's face and arm are illuminated by daylight, evidently coming from a window and suggesting the man is gazing out to sea. His expression is pensive, as if he is thinking of other fisherman still on perilous voyages, searching for elusive shoals of mackerel and herring. Fishing luggers from Newlyn would regularly go to sea for several months, heading up as far as the North Sea. Many paintings by artists of the Newlyn School -notably Frank Bramley's A Hopeless Dawn- evoke the grief and loss that were integral parts of life in Cornwall's fishing communities during those years. Born in 1855 in Ladywood near Bermingham, and trained at the Birmingham School of Art, Harris had gone on to study at Verlat's academy in Antwerp. In 1883, he followed fellow-student Walter Langley in settling in Newlyn, and the following year Frank Bramley Stanhope Forbes and Fred Hall joined the fledgling colony of artists. Hovering between genre and Realism, and avoiding the more polished style of the members of the Royal Academy, Newlyn School paintings depict the day-to-day lives of the ordinary people of Cornwall, most of whom depended on fishing for a livelihood and who often lived close to poverty. Although known for his depictions of fishermen wearing oilskins, Harris also painted women and children, in scenes set in simple unadorned interiors, as in Arranging the Irises and The Lesson; beautifully composed works that evoke the best painting of Frank Bramley Many of Harris's paintings, as in The Valentine (1894) and News from Abroad, contain a social or political message, and focus on the theme of learning and reading. He died in Cleve Prior, Worcestershire in 1906. Peter Murray, September 2023