Wanderlust Travel Magazine (UK)
PENZANCE & ST IVES, CORNWALL
Take the newly revamped overnight sleeper from London and wake up on the Cornish coast, a destination finally embracing its wild setting and artistic past, writes Andrew Cattanach
T he south Cornish coast was drifting lazily by my train window, looking austere in the low morning light. It certainly wasn’t the rugged, romantic seascape I had come to anticipate viewing – more like an elegant abstract painting in myriad shades of grey.
It was a fitting picture nonetheless. I had arrived in Cornwall on GWR’S newly revamped Night Riviera Sleeper train, avoiding the crowds and the congested traffic, to explore how the area had once been a European capital of modern art and home to some of Britain’s best-loved artists of the era.
Long before it was the staycation sensation we know today, Cornwall was a haven for jaded urbanites. During the Second World War, artists such as sculptor Barbara Hepworth escaped the Blitz and made homes for themselves in the fishing villages of the South-west
To locals, these émigrés must have seemed a queer bunch, with strange clothes and even stranger ideas. For a start, the newcomers made abstract art, which in 1939 would have been deemed radical by most Londoners. In Cornwall it must have seemed totally off the wall.
The area has long-since come to terms with its artistic heritage, however, and is now home to some exceptional museums, not least Tate St Ives (tate.org.uk), which recently reopened its doors after an extensive refurbishment and extension. The building is boldly elegant, inside and out, and full of works associated with the St Ives art scene, including pieces by influential figures such as Picasso, who inspired the young set that congregated around Hepworth.
I arrived there fresh from the train, and while I drifted the quiet galleries, I saw, echoed in the artworks that surrounded me, the same muted landscape I’d spied earlier from my cabin. It fired my desire to explore the area further, visiting castle-topped islands and wandering the winding paths that wrap the coast, in search of not just the legacies of the artists who made this region their home but their inspiration.