Cornish Port

" . . . my wife [and I] and small son were lent a cottage in Cornwall. We suddenly came upon Porthleven, and it was extremely exciting! I told my wife to go away with my son while I made some drawings."

15th Oct 1938 

Heard from Mrs Marchant [director of the Goupil Gallery] that she had sold my painting ‘Porthleven’ (20x24) which I painted in July. She says business is terrible.

 

RE sales diary - entry 138 - Cornish Port - (Porthleven) - 24x20 - Goupil Salon (Autumn) - £25

According to Richard's 1988 letter to the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia (shown below), he only did two paintings of Porthleven. Both are listed in the catalogue for the Redfern Gallery exhibition in May 1938.

• Cat 14, Porthleven, Cornwall, priced at 35 guineas 

• Cat 23, Low Tide, Porthleven, priced at 100 guineas  

"Low Tide, Porthleven" was sold from the Redfern show (and eventually found its way to the NGV in Australia) but Porthleven, Cornwall was not. It looks like Richard then decided to put it into the 1938 autumn salon at …

read more..

According to Richard's 1988 letter to the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia (shown below), he only did two paintings of Porthleven. Both are listed in the catalogue for the Redfern Gallery exhibition in May 1938.

• Cat 14, Porthleven, Cornwall, priced at 35 guineas 

• Cat 23, Low Tide, Porthleven, priced at 100 guineas  

"Low Tide, Porthleven" was sold from the Redfern show (and eventually found its way to the NGV in Australia) but Porthleven, Cornwall was not. It looks like Richard then decided to put it into the 1938 autumn salon at the Goupil Gallery, retitling it Cornish Port - recorded in his sales diary as Cornish Port (Porthleven). It was not unusual for Richard or a gallery owner to change the name of paintings when they had recently been shown in another exhibition.

Cornish Port sold from the Goupil for £25. In the letter below Richard suggests it might have been bought by Eddie Marsh (Sir Edward Marsh), one of his patrons, but he says he cannot  be sure.  However, we have discovered through the  Contemporary Art Society website that it was not Eddie Marsh who bought the  painting but another collector with the similar name Ernest Marsh.

This story of the painting holds up except for Richard's remark that he had painted the picture sold at the Goupil in July, two months after it was listed in the Redfern catalogue. So some mystery still hangs over this work. Is there in fact a third Porthleven picture?

In some contexts Low Tide, Porthleven is misnamed 'Porthleven, Cornwall' so it is possible for the two pictures to get mixed up.