William Banks Fortescue (British , 1850-1924)


Putting in broccoli plants, Cornwall signed and dated 'W.B.Fortescue/07' (lower right)oil on canvas 91.5 x 71.5cm (36 x 28 1/8in).
|ProvenanceProperty of a Charitable Institution. ExhibitedLondon, Royal Academy, 1907, no. 527.Paris, Salon, 1914 (according to an inscription on the frame).William Banks Fortescue was part of the group of Birmingham artists who discovered Newlyn in the mid-1880s. Having initially studied engineering, Fortescue went to Paris and then Venice in the early 1880s, where he may have encountered Frank Bramley and Leghe Suthers. He started exhibiting at the Birmingham Society of Artists in 1884, and by the following year he was living in Newlyn, initially taking rooms at Mrs Maddern's house, Bell Vue, where Stanhope Forbes was also rooming. Fortescue's early Newlyn works, such as The Fish Fag (1888, Atkinson Art Gallery Collection), echo those of Forbes and Langley, using local models to depict the life and hardships of the fishing community. Following his move from Newlyn to Paul, and later to the rival artistic community of St. Ives, Fortescue continued to represent the rural life around him, in works such as A Ploughing Match, Cornwall (1891, Royal Academy). For a similar composition to the present lot, entitled Planting Broccoli, Cornwall see Tom Cross's, The Shining Sands, Tiverton, 1994, p. 76.