At first glance this painting has an air of confusion about it. The leaden sky and rain-wet ground offer an insight into the sadness at the heart of the work. The central character, a young woman seemingly in distress, is being comforted by an older woman as she leads her away from the scene in the background. That scene is at the very heart of the narrative that Langley is illustrating. Just to the right of the post office door is a sheet of paper pasted to the wall. The paper contains the names of the fishermen recorded as missing from a recent disaster at sea. The name of the young woman’s husband, brother or father (and in some cases all 3) has been added to the list and she is inconsolable.

This is one of our most popular paintings and is very often commented on by our visitors, perhaps because they recognise and empathise with the people trying to shelter from water simultaneously from the sky and the sea. Something that Penzance promenade does exceptionally well at any time of year.

While this painting has many of the tropes of the Newlyn school, painted en plain-air with a muted palette and featuring people going about their everyday business, its composition is unusual. Dominating the scene, at the centre of this expanse of canvas, is nothing. Garstin has used absence as form. Making the focal point a large, grey area of wet promenade showing nothing but a faint reflection of the surrounding buildings and the sky.

Doris Shaw, known as Dod, was born in London in 1890. Although not dated, this portrait of Procter’s friend, model and fellow artist was probably completed in the 1920s when Dod specialised in painting portraits, a theme that she would revisit many times throughout her career.

The strong, elongated limbs recall work by the French neo-classical painter Ingres. The model has a detached, distant expression as if being painted as a still life. Procter would likely have been aware of Christina Rosetti’s poem of 1869 'In an Artists Studio', wherein the poet subtlety derides a male artist for painting his model ‘not as she is’ but how he ‘wishes her to be’. Dod Procter seems to paint her studio models just as they are, including herself.

This painting typifies the change in style and subject matter as we move from the Newlyn School into the Lamorna colony. The interest in colour, light and a lack of narrative is evident here in Birch’s painting of 1937.

This watercolour shows a group of people working in an open clay mine. It is unusual in that almost the entire work is described in shades of white. One can imagine how bright the scene must have been, especially when the sun came out.

Dame Laura Knight was one of the twentieth century’s most prolific British artists. Her career spanned nearly eighty years and the extraordinary breadth of her talent encompassed a huge variety of subjects, techniques and styles. Her achievements included being the first ever elected female Royal Academician, a highly acclaimed War Artist and being made a Dame of the British Empire.