With the extension of the Railway line to Penzance in West Cornwall in 1877 the Cornish seaside fishing villages of St Ives and Newlyn started to attract artists who were drawn by the beauty of the scenery, the fantastic quality of light that is created by the sea and the quartz rock particles in the sand on the beaches, the simplicity of life, drama of the sea and the fishing boats. This spark created Cornwall's rich, world-class art history and the Cornish artists we see today. Our family of artists that we represent are firmly on Cornwall's historic timeline of famous artists. The artists, who became known as the Newlyn School, were led by Stanhope Forbes and Frank Bramwell, who actually moved to Cornwall to live from the 1880s. These Cornish artists loved working outside, painting the fantastic characters and fishing villages that they found. This genre of art gave rise to the Cornish impressionist style of painting, which is still very much alive today. The Cornish artist Ted Dyer is Cornwall's leading artist for traditional and impressionist paintings that follow the Newlyn School of Art genre. This new art colony in Cornwall began attracting a lot of attention from more contemporary artists, and in 1928 Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood travelled to St Ives in Cornwall and came across a Cornish fisherman who was an artist. His name was Alfred Wallis, and he used pieces of wood from the beach and cardboard grounds to paint on, and the paint used for these Cornish artworks and paintings was also used to paint the real boats in St Ives harbour. Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood were impressed by the directness of Alfred Wallis's work and the object-like qualities of his paintings. By the 1950s, Cornwall had become the centre of world art, and it remains one of the leading places in the world for artists to live and work, with images of Cornwall made famous by John Miller's and John Dyer's prints, which have been sold worldwide for decades. The naive style of painting championed by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood has become one of Cornwall's most enduring art genres, producing the great Cornish artists of today, including John Dyer and Joanne Short,an elected member of the current Newlyn Society of Artists. Find out more about Cornwall's rich art history, from the famous John Miller prints to John Dyer's art and the leading contemporary artists now.