Artist     Alethea Garstin
Title      Regatta Day
Date      1940's
object    Painting
Media    oil
Size       33 x 40.5cm
Ref          14

Purchased in the 96th RWA Annual Exhibition in 1948

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Regatta Day
Born in Penzance in 1894, the daughter of the Limerick-born landscape and figure artist, Norman Garstin (1847-1926), Alethea Garstin was trained by her father who, in turn, had studied with Charles Verlat in Antwerp and Carolus-Duran in Paris. Her education in painting was supplemented by a brief time at Heatherley's School of Art in London.

As Niamh O’Sullivan relates, Garstin’s range of subjects was extensive and included domestic animals and horses, garden and street scenes, portraits and figure studies, seaside resorts, usually executed on a small scale, often with light and humorous touches. Many of her works were painted from her red Morris tourer - her “studio on wheels”. The RWA Collection has a number of small coastal scenes by Garstin; they are innocent renditions of seaside resorts, yet beneath their surface charm there is rigorous observation, a toughness in the choice of colour and an ability to capture the light using the most appropriate mark.

No fewer than 104 of her paintings were shown at the Fine Art Society in London in 1978, the year of her death.

Alethea Garstin (1894-1978) an extract of an essay on the artist by Niamh O'Sullivan:

Having taken up painting at a precociously young age, Alethea had her first work accepted by the Royal Academy at the age of eighteen years. Bought by the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette, this painting, The Chairmenders, caused a sensation. The singularity of this achievement led the then President of the RA, Sir Edward Poynter, to seek a personal meeting with her.

Alethea Garstin was part of a tightly-knit family which included her brother, Crosbie, a well-known writer of the ebullient Edwardian age. From the production of the first of his many books, Vagabond Verses in 1917, Alethea produced a range of decorations and illustrations for them.

Following extensive travelling, the Garstins settled in the celebrated colony of Newlyn in Cornwall, later moving to Penzance. In 1960, long after the deaths of both her parents, Alethea moved to Penwith.

Alethea accompanied her father on his travels, including his annual summer schools of painting, usually in France. The Garstin school was at Le Faouet in southern Brittany the year World War 1 was declared. As Nic Hale, one of their biographers, rather quaintly put it, they suddenly, 'found themselves responsible for twenty-three ladies, one of them titled, and one young gentleman, a long way from home in an out of the way corner of France, surrounded by nervous natives who were quite likely to mistake any alien for a spy'. Alethea's contribution to the war was to work as a nurse with the Society of Friends, looking after war orphans and refugees in France, an occupation she resumed during the Second World War.

Following in the footsteps of Stanhope Forbes, Norman Garstin, Frank Bramley and Henry Scott Tuke, the second generation of Newlyn artists included Laura Knight, Harold Harvey, Dod Proctor and Alethea Garstin. By virtue of being her father's daughter, and an artist of note in her own right, Alethea spanned these two generations. Influenced by her father, she indirectly absorbed his interest in Japanese art, Whistler and the impressionists. Ultimately, as a second generation Newlynite, her work bears witness to Newlyn realism but is mitigated by an interest in more individual expression typical of the early decades of the twentieth century.

She visited, amongst other countries, France, Belgium, Morocco, Kenya, Australia, Tanzania and St. Lucia, often with her friend, the artist, Dod Proctor. There are paintings of all of these locations. Her repertoire also reflected her many interests: books, theatre, cinema, music, cooking, gardening, and a wide and varied circle of friends. Her subject matter included domestic animals and horses, garden and street scenes, portraits and figure studies, usually executed on a small scale, often with humorous touches. Many of her works were painted from her red Morris tourer - her studio on wheels.

The best of Alethea Garstin's work stands alongside that of her more well-known contemporaries and reflects her awareness of the avant-garde trends of the early decades of the twentieth century, as exemplified by the likes of Walter Sickert and Alfred Wallis. Intimate and whimsical, the paintings and sketches in this collection are indicative of Garstin's interests and techniques, and some are evidence of her at her most accomplished. They are illustrative of her eclectic range of subject matter, demonstrating her genuine charm and individuality.

Father and daughter were shown together at an exhibition in the Penwith Gallery in St. Ives, the National Gallery of Ireland and the Fine Art Society in London in 1978, the year of Alethea's death. Norman was represented by sixty-one paintings and Alethea by one hundred and four.

Niamh O'Sullivan, art historian
©  The Molesworth Gallery, Dublin, Ireland

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