THIS autumn Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penzance is staging two new exhibitions.

The first, ‘Lamorna Birch: A Painter Laureate’, showcases one of the most well-known and prolific artists working in Cornwall in the early twentieth century.

A painter of pure landscape, self-taught and self-made, Samuel John ‘Lamorna’ Birch RA (1869-1955) was the founder and father figure of the Lamorna colony of artists and writers in West Cornwall.

Birch had a lifelong association with Lamorna, from where he took his name (to distinguish himself from the Newlyn School artist, Lionel Birch).

‘A Painter Laureate’ refers to the title of Austin Wormleighton’s 1995 biography about Birch. Austin was a founding member of the Lamorna Society and was president up until his death in 2019.

This exhibition of Austin’s own collection of paintings by Birch is being staged to celebrate a second edition of the book, updated by Austin and published posthumously.

The second exhibition, ‘Biddy Picard: Timeless Penwith’, features around 30 paintings, giving an overview of an artist known both locally and nationally for her highly distinctive evocations of West Cornwall.

Born in Derbyshire, Biddy Picard (1922-2019) studied first at Chesterfield School of Art and subsequently at the Slade School of Fine Art. Arriving in Cornwall on a French fishing boat in the late 1940s, she initially lived in Lamorna as part of the post-war art colony, before moving to Mousehole and setting up a pottery with her husband Bill.

Her paintings vary greatly in style, ranging from classical life studies of family and friends to domestic drawings and landscape paintings, through to semi-abstract and abstract work, often inspired by visits to the Isles of Scilly.

However, she was most renowned for her distinctive semi-naive harbour scenes in which she evoked the feeling and spirit of West Penwith in timeless compositions.

The exhibitions are running from October 15 to January 10 2026. Also on show in the downstairs galleries will be a selection of Newlyn School works from Penlee House's own collection.

For more information about Penlee House Gallery and Museum, visit: penleehouse.org.uk