My
favourite stories told by my grandmother Elizabeth Blaney Welch were those of a
talented and famous ancestor.
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| Photo of poster in Penlee House Gallery |
He
was Walter Langley, her great uncle on her father’s side. Walter was the
brother of Elizabeth’s grandmother, Ellen Elizabeth Langley (1838-1915) who had
married Edwin Blaney (1834-1885) in 1855.
Walter
Langley was a watercolour painter who is most well known as a founding member
of the Newlyn School. He created large scale watercolours of people
and scenes from everyday life in a fishing village and the seafaring tragedies
along the coast near Penzance in England. Walter had great empathy for the
struggles of the poor and of disadvantaged workers.
Gran was very familiar with his work and had some artifacts that she passed along to
me when she knew I was interested. I am pleased to have a catalogue from an
exhibit of his work held at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and at the
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery in June 1984.
She
also gave me some correspondence between his second wife, Ethel and the
Birmingham Lord Mayor’s secretary E. Sanford. It concerned a Memorial
Exhibition in 1923 and A Brief History of Walter Langley R.I. (Royal Institute
of Painters in Watercolour) written on June 25, 1931 by Edward Harper, RBSA,
Hon. Sec. of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. Edward Harper was a
fellow student and friend of Walter Langley.
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| Lickey Hills |
In his
early years Walter painted rural scenes close to his home in Birmingham, not
until 1882 did he choose to make the life of fishermen and their families, his
subject matter.
At
least one piece of his art is resident in Canada. Elizabeth owned a miniature
watercolour scene, about 2½ by 4 inches in size, of Lickey Hills, painted by
Walter Langley in 1875. It was originally owned by one of his elder sisters and
has been passed down through the family. There are some handwritten notes attached to the painting and I am currently researching to confirm the details of its provenance.
As
a result of my Grandmother’s influence, Walter Langley became my first family
history research subject. It was an easy place to start as much information has
been written about him and his work still hangs in the Birmingham Art Gallery
in England. The artifacts she gave me inspired my first trip to England and led
me to get in touch with a couple of cousins near Birmingham.
I have been
fortunate to visit the gallery twice and see some of his original art works. I
found them to be very beautiful and moving.
I was also able to travel to the south west coast
of Britain and visit Penlee House in Penzance where I saw a photograph of
Walter on display as well as some prints of his art. I
stood on the seawall in the nearby village of Newlyn that appears in several of
his paintings. It was very thrilling to be standing there knowing that he had
painted that very scene a hundred years earlier.
I
have just received a book about his life that I am looking forward to reading;
Walter Langley: From Birmingham to Newlyn, written by his grandson, Roger Langley,
published June 2011. It is a revised and rewritten edition of a study first
published in 1997 with many new illustrations.
Walter
was very prolific and I have some prints and posters of his work hanging on my
living room wall that I enjoy immensely. Some came from my grandmother and some
I was able to purchase in Birmingham and Penzance when I visited there.
It seems that this is where the artistic talent in our family’s current and past generations originated.
It seems that this is where the artistic talent in our family’s current and past generations originated.
http://www.penleehouse.org.uk
