Identity:

Stanhope Alexander Forbes was a painter. He married the Canadian painter Elizabeth Adela Armstrong.

Life:

Forbes' received his artistic schooling at the Lambeth School of Art in London from 1874 to 1876, the R.A. schools from 1876 to 1878 and then in Paris in the studio of Léon Bonnat where he came under the influence of the French Realist painters Jean-François Millet and Jules Bastien-Lepage. In 1884 he settled in the Cornish fishing village of Newlyn where he was to remain for the rest of his life. His Fish Sale on a Cornish Beach (1885; Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery) which was exhibited at the R.A. in 1885 brought him critical acclaim. Later works include: Forging the Anchor (1892; Ipswich Museums) and The Seine Boat (1904; Private Collection).

Forbes was also one of the founder members of the New English Art Club in 1886, at the first exhibition of which in June 1888 JW showed A White Note (YMSM 44) and a recent etching of Brussels, although he never actually became a member. However, Forbes disapproved of the low-life subjects of JW's pupil Walter Sickert and left the NEAC. He was amongst those proposed invitees to a dinner organised by W. C. Symons to congratulate JW on being made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Munich, a dinner which was to be held at the Criterion in Piccadilly on 1 May 1889 (#00631). Forbes was elected A.R.A. in 1892 and R.A. in 1910.

Bibliography:

Meynell, W., 'Mr Stanhope A. Forbes, A.R.A.', Art Journal, 1892, pp. 65-69; Garstin, N., 'The Work of Stanhope A. Forbes, A.R.A.', The Studio, vol. 23, 1901, pp. 81-88; Birch, L., Stanhope Forbes and Elizabeth S. Forbes, London, 1906; Hind, C. L., 'The Art of Stanhope Forbes', Art Journal, London, 1911; Fox, C., and F. Greenacre, Artists of the Newlyn School, 1880-1900, Plymouth, 1979; Fox, C., and F. Greenacre, Painting in Newlyn, 1880-1930, exhibition catalogue, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 1985; McConkey, Kenneth, Memory and Desire: Painting in Britain and Ireland at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, London, 2002; Wood, Christopher, 'Stanhope (Alexander) Forbes', The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy, http://www.groveart.com (accessed 22 February 2002).