The Potting Shed

Notes

Stanhope Alexander Forbes holds a distinguished place in British art history as the leading figure of the Newlyn School, an artists’ colony founded in Cornwall in the early 1880s. Forbes’s early training in Paris, particularly at the Académie Julian under Léon Bonnat, exposed him to the innovations of French Impressionism, which had a lasting impact on his work. He absorbed the emphasis on painting en plein air, the observation of natural light, and a looser, more expressive brushwork that challenged academic convention. These lessons, carried back to Britain, informed his artistic outlook and provided the foundation for his pioneering role in what would later be identified as British Impressionism.¹

The establishment of the Newlyn School was not only geographic but also ideological. Forbes and his circle sought to merge the fresh painterly approach of French Impressionism with a characteristically British engagement with realism and social narrative. His early works, such as Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach (1885, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery), articulate this synthesis: ambitious in scale yet rooted in contemporary life, dignifying the labour of working people through careful observation and painterly vitality. Forbes’s role as both leader and exemplar of the Newlyn School has remained central to its narrative.

By the early 20th century, Forbes’s subject matter shifted from grand coastal scenes to more intimate depictions of rural and domestic life. The Potting Shed, painted in 1940, belongs to this later phase of his career. The composition captures a quiet moment: a woman with a basket approaches a weathered garden shed, while a man tends to plants outside. Dappled sunlight filters through the trees, creating a play of light and shade across foliage, path, and roof. The painterly handling remains vigorous, with quick strokes animating the surfaces, yet the overall effect is lyrical rather than dramatic. In scale, subject, and sensibility, the painting reflects a turn inward, away from the public spectacle of Newlyn harbour life, toward the private rhythms of the garden.

The timing of the work is significant. Painted in 1940, at the outset of the Second World War, it resonates with the “Dig for Victory” campaign that encouraged civilians to grow their own food in response to rationing and shortages. Unlike official wartime propaganda, however, Forbes does not present his figures as symbols of national duty. Instead, he dignifies the ordinary, rendering the tending of plants and the approach to a shed with quiet poetry. The painting thus functions as both a record of continuity in domestic life and a subtle image of resilience at a time of global upheaval.

Recent curatorial projects have emphasised this breadth within Forbes’s oeuvre. The exhibition Elizabeth and Stanhope Forbes: A Marriage of Art (Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum, 2025)² highlighted how Forbes’s later works should be understood not as a retreat from ambition but as part of a sustained engagement with Impressionist ideals in a domestic and rural key. Contemporary exhibitions on British Impressionism (Messum’s, 2020s) have also re-situated Forbes within a broader lineage, demonstrating how his painterly sensitivity, shaped in Paris, translated into a distinctly British idiom that retained relevance across generations.

In The Potting Shed, we see the culmination of these trajectories. It is a painting that looks back, rooted in Impressionist practice, plein air observation, and the ethos of the Newlyn School, but also forward, anticipating the mid-century revaluation of the everyday as a site of beauty and meaning. In its modest subject and lyrical execution, the work demonstrates Forbes’s lifelong ability to invest ordinary life with dignity and depth, ensuring his legacy as one of the most enduring voices in British Impressionism.³

^1. Kenneth McConkey (1989) British Impressionism, London: Phaidon.

^2. Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum (2025) Elizabeth and Stanhope Forbes: A Marriage of Art, exhibition material.

^3. Caroline Fox (1993) Stanhope Forbes and the Newlyn School, Exeter: David and Charles.