When questioned for the 1891 census, Betsy Lanyon, an 84-year-old widow from Newlyn, decided she had better register a late change of career. She told her inquisitors that she was no longer a ‘fishwife’ — her new occupation was ‘artist’s model’.
In the decades around the turn of the last century, Newlyn, a fishing port a few miles west of Penzance, was overrun with artists. Stanhope Forbes had established his position as father of a local ‘school’ of painters; his followers were to be seen daily on the nearby beaches, battling against the Cornish wind as they attempted to keep their canvases upright. Villagers cashed in on the influx, renting out lofts as studios, using their carts to transport paintings to the railway, modelling for a few shillings.