Penzance

Harry Rutherford 1903 - 17/4/1985

Summary

A sunlit view of Penzance painted from the Albert Pier in a morning light during September and October 1930 and worked from both nature and subsequent drawings. The view is looking from the jetty in the foreground, across a quiet harbour scattered with small moored boats and a larger rigged ship on the far right. Two figures sit in a small moored rowing boat in the foreground to the right. The town is seen in the background, covering the hillside with terraced streets and stepped roofs. A church dome is rising above the roofs in the centre distance. Born in Denton, Manchester, in 1903, and later settling in Hyde, Harry Rutherford attended art classes at Hyde School of Art on Saturday mornings. He continued his studies through evening classes at the Manchester School of Art under Adolphe Valette. Among his fellow students was L.S. Lowry. In 1925 he was the first and youngest student to enrol in the W.R. Sickert School at St Mary's Parsonage in Manchester. Walter Sickert declared him to be his "intellectual heir and executor". For a time they shared a studio on Oxford Road. Subsequently Rutherford managed the school for Sickert. It relocated to 26 Brown Street in 1926 but by October of that year the school closed. During the 1930s Rutherford worked in Cornwall, sharing a studio with the artists Ernest and Dod Procter, two members of the colony of artists known as the Newlyn School. His work started to focus on buildings and seascapes. In a letter to the gallery dated December 4th 1930, Rutherford writes of this painting "It is painted in oil colours, diluted with turpentine to enable delicate manipulation, upon a board prepared with an absorbent gesso ground - a preparation I learned from my friend Ernest Procter". Following this painting's purchase from the artist in November 1930 from the 'Sickert's Pupils' exhibition, it was loaned to the Royal Academy in 1931 for the Summer Show. In 1932 Rutherford moved to London, returning to Manchester in the 1950s to take up the position of part-time lecturer at the Regional College of Art. In 1961 he was elected President of the Manchester Academy.