This is Walter Langley

Walter Langley (8 June 1852 – 21 March 1922) was an English painter and founder of the Newlyn School of plein air artists.

Error in ‘Langley’s right to use in the Royal Birminghsm Society of Artists. The supposed date of this entry – 1894 – is not consistent in the publicize of the postage stamp issued in the reign of George V (1911 – 1936)

He was born in Birmingham and his father was a journeyman tailor. At 15 he was apprenticed to a lithographer. At 21 he won a scholarship to South Kensington and he studied designing there for two years. The sometimes deeply ornate discharge duty is mainly in gold and silver and in a Renaissance style. He returned to Birmingham but took happening painting full-time, and in 1881 was elected an Associate of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA). In the same year he was offered £500 for a year’s function by a Mr Thrupp (a Birmingham photographer). With this child support he and his relatives moved to Newlyn where he was one of the first artists to see eye to eye and began recording the energy of the fishing community.

Politically left wing for his era, he was noted for his social realist portrayals of operational class figures, particularly fishermen and their families. He was a enthusiast of Charles Bradlaugh, a ahead of its time socialist politician. His own working-class background enabled him to identify bearing in mind the villagers and the hardships they endured, many of his paintings reflect this kinship with the working-class fisher-folk surrounded by whom he lived. One of the best known works is the watercolour For Men Must Work and Women Must Weep (1883; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) based on Charles Kingsley’s poem The Three Fishers (1851). Another is Between The Tides (1901; Warrington Museum & Art Gallery). News of the missing was shown at the Royal Academy in 1884 and sold to an shadowy buyer for £250.

Although one of the first to reach agreement in the Newlyn artists’ colony Newlyn School, Langley initially benefited little from its growing fame, partly because of his working-class origins and partly because until 1892 he painted largely in watercolour rather than the more prestigious medium of oils. His to the lead training in lithography gives his paintings a detail and texture that take effect his rarefied skills.

In 1884, Langley was elected a supporter of the RBSA and continued to exhibit widely throughout the UK and abroad. Later in his career his reputation grew. One of Langley’s paintings was singled out as “a beautiful and authentic work of art” by Leo Tolstoy in his book What is Art?, while in 1895 Langley was invited by the Uffizi to contribute a self-portrait to hang closely those of Raphael, Rubens and Rembrandt in their gathering of portraits of great artists. Today his fake is considered “vital to the image of the Newlyn School” and “alongside Stanhope Forbes … the most consistent accepted and substantial in output”.