Winslow Homer in Cullercoats

Cullercoats to reveal its colourful history

Sep 23 2010
Tony Henderson
The Journal

PEOPLE are to be put in the picture about a seaside village’s past as a leading artists’ colony.

Cullercoats in North Tyneside acted as a magnet for painters in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

As well as North East artists, it attracted national and international painters such as the American Winslow Homer, William Orchardson, John Watson and Frank Holl.

Now, as part of a new and wider strategy to protect and make the most of North Tyneside’s heritage, the artistic pedigree of the village is to be highlighted for visitors and locals.

An interpretation panel featuring information on and paintings by Winslow Homer is being installed on the site of his Bank Top studio overlooking the bay.Homer spent 18 months in Cullercoats from 1881, a period which marked a turning point in his artistic development and provided material to which he returned throughout his career.

In 1998, Microsoft’s Bill Gates paid $36m for a Homer painting and the artist’s work Inside The Bar, Cullercoats, 1883 hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Another panel on the opposite side of the bay will carry facts and paintings about other artists and the colony.From the 1820s, Cullercoats began to attract artists like Thomas Miles Richardson, Henry Perlee Parker and John Wilson Carmichael, and the colony developed from the 1870s to the 1920s.

An arts trail leaflet guide around the village has been updated.

Edited from http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/environment-news/2010/09/23/cullercoats-to-reveal-its-colourful-history-61634-27325170/