Western Morning News (Saturday)
Paintings that evoke romantic whistle and wheeze of steam
Frank Ruhrmund enjoys the art of train enthusiast Tony Giles at Penlee House Gallery
Not a figment of Edith Nesbit’s imagination but a real live railway child, the artist Tony Giles, now being remembered in a one-room exhibition in Gallery 5 of Penlee House Gallery & Museum, referred so often to the railway in his paintings from The Cornish Riviera to Penzance station, I sometimes thought he should have signed them as Tony GWR Giles.
Born in one of the railway workers’ cottages close by the extensive GWR yards at Taunton, his father was an engine driver and in school holidays he would travel free in the leading carriage from Taunton to Penzance and back and, as we are told, “he never forgot the thrill of those journeys or the magic of being in Cornwall.” As the 30 or so works in this exhibition show, elements of that magic were to appear in all that he did. A self-taught artist, he was to train as a cartographer at the Admiralty Hydrographic Office near Taunton, and then worked for the Admiralty as a chart draughtsman, prior to working in local government planning with both the Somerset and Cornwall County Councils.
It was in 1961, as the co-curators of the exhibition, John Branfield, author and friend of the artist, and Katie Herbert, Curator & Deputy Director, Penlee House, point out, that he realised his dream of coming to live in Cornwall. He was especially fond of Penwith, “He loved and understood its distinctive character, which he expressed in these playful, joyous and idiosyncratic paintings and drawings.” A long standing member of the Penwith Society of Arts in St Ives and the Newlyn Society of Artists, with whom he exhibited regularly, he also exhibited at a number of other venues throughout the UK. No one knew then that he would die suddenly only a week before his 69th birthday. One with a passion for the age of steam, those lucky enough to have to visited his home at Langley Cottage in St Agnes will have seen the giant working model railway he, with the help of his wife Hilary, the second Mrs Giles, had built in their garden.
An artist who refused to play safe in his art, he elected instead to make strong personal statements in his compositions about whatever he saw or felt.
One of the themes he constantly explored was that of the impact made upon the local landscape by the railways. He never forgot the steam engines that had thundered through his youth, and his artistic ability was such that the whistle and wheeze of steam, the squeal of brakes, could almost be heard in his paintings of trains puffing their way through the Cornish countryside. An artist with a singular style, there is never any difficulty in instantly recognising a painting or drawing by Tony Giles, as well as painting Cornish railways another of his favourite subjects was the fishing village of Porthleven.
But, whatever he focused his attention upon, from the grave in Barnoon Cemetery, St Ives of Alfred Wallis to the Crowns engine houses at Botallack, he did so with an understanding of, and sympathy for, his subject matter that is rare. Although born and raised in Somerset, something over which he had no control, he was in every other respect a Cornishman.
Many will remember the highly successful major retrospective of his work held in the Penwith Gallery, St Ives, in 1990 in celebration of his 65th birthday. I had the privilege of reviewing it at the time when I said something to the effect that it emphasised the fact that he had long been underrated as an artist.
Not to be missed, this exhibition, which can be seen in Gallery 5, Penlee House Gallery & Museum, until January 23, 2021, puts the record straight, and now gives Tony Giles his rightful place as one of the best of Cornwall’s artists.