Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham CBE (8 June 1912 – 26 January 2004) was one of the foremost British abstract artists, a member of the influential Penwith Society of Arts.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, known as Willie, was born in St Andrews, Fife, on 8 June 1912 into an old landed Scottish family.

Barns-Graham's parents were second cousins and their respective families were well established representatives of minor Scottish gentry from both the east and west of the country.

As a child she showed very early signs of creative ability.

It was at school that Wilhelmina decided that she wanted to be an artist after one of her paintings was chosen to be displayed on the wall there, she stated later in life that "painting chose me, not I it".

After school she set her sights on Edinburgh College of Art where, after some dispute with her father who was an emotional man prone to uncontrolled anger, she enrolled in 1931.

During her time at College Barns-Graham was taught by tutors including portrait painter David Alison and painter William MacTaggart, her friends there included the influential Scottish painters Robert MacBryde, Robert Colquhoun and William Gear.

Since birth Barns-Graham suffered from weakness of the lungs, exacerbated by stress or anxiety, and in 1933 she contracted pleurisy forcing her to take a break from College.

Barns-Graham finally graduated with her diploma in 1936.

After her education Barns-Graham made study trips to Paris, London and St Tropez before moving to St Ives, Cornwall in 1940 at the suggestion of the Edinburgh College of Art's Principal Hubert Wellington.

Barns-Graham moved near to where a group of modernist artists had settled, at Carbis Bay.

This was a pivotal moment in her life.

On one of her first evenings there she met the sculptor Barbara Hepworth who made an immediate and lasting impression on her she then went on to meet Borlase Smart, Alfred Wallis and Bernard Leach, as well as the painter Ben Nicholson and the sculptors Naum Gabo and Margaret Mellis.

After two weeks in St Ives, Barns-Graham acquired her first studio, directly below the Porthmeor Gallery which was the administrative headquarters of the St Ives Society of Artists.

Her paintings at the time were heavily influenced by the Cornish landscapes and the St Ives harbour.

During 1940 and 1941 Barns-Graham contributed to the war effort by volunteering in a factory making camouflage nets however using the rough materials gave her dermatitis so she had to give up the work, instead knitting string vests and socks.

The 1940s were an active time for the St Ives Society of Artists who received a number of invitations to send exhibitions and groups of works to galleries in the UK and abroad, Barns-Graham's work was always included in these as the Society's secretary, Borlase Smart, thought highly of her work.

After the war the number of young modern artists joining the St Ives Society of Artists increased, of which Barns-Graham was one, their works were often shown in the darkly lit font area of the New Gallery of the Mariners' Church which gave them the nickname 'The Artists Around the Font'.

There was deemed to be hostility from the more traditional artists of the Society so Barns-Graham and the other modern artists decided to exhibit their work separately in the crypt area of the New Gallery, calling themselves the Crypt Group.

In 1942 Barns-Graham became a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, in which she exhibited with every year, and the St Ives Society of Artists.

Whilst establishing herself in St Ives, Barns-Graham also continued to send work back to Scotland for major exhibitions held there such as the Royal Scottish Academy's 117th Exhibition in 1943.

The use of the crypt as an exhibition space caught on and was used again a number of times to exhibit the work of the young modernist members of the St Ives Society of Artists, including in March 1947 where seventeen artists exhibited work, including Barns-Graham, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Peter Lanyon.

Barns-Graham's first opportunity to exhibit in London came when her work was included in a group exhibition of six at the Redfern Gallery.

This was due to the introduction and support of Patrick Heron who visited Barns-Graham's studio in St Ives and was excited by her work.

After a few years of tension, Barns-Graham eventually left the St Ives Society of Artists in 1949, becoming one of the founding members of a new breakaway group named Penwith Society of Arts.

The first Penwith Society exhibition opened in June 1949 with huge success and 2755 paying visitors coming to see it.

In 1950 Barns-Graham's painting Upper Glacier was purchased by the British Council, this was her largest sale she had made so far and the following year the work was also included in Herbert Read's book Contemporary British Art. Barns-Graham's work was also increasingly being included in London exhibitions such as the Leicester Galleries Artists of Fame and Promise and the inaugural exhibition at the new Institute of Contemporary Arts premises.

In 1951 Barns-Graham's work was also included in international exhibitions such as the Biennale de Peinture de France, where Barns-Graham was one of only eight British artists invited to contribute.

Barns-Graham travelled regularly over the next twenty years to Switzerland, Italy, Paris and Spain.

Barns-Graham would later have her first one-person exhibition in London at Redfern in 1952.

With the exception of a short teaching term at Leeds School of Art (1956–1957), where she befriended the artists Terry Frost and Stass Paraskos, and three years in London (1960–1963), she lived and worked in St Ives.

In the same year she married the young author and aspiring poet, and later noted architect, David Lewis; the marriage was annulled in 1960.

From 1960, on inheriting a house outside St Andrews from her aunt Mary Niesh (who had been a support to her throughout her art college years), she split her time between summers in Cornwall and winters in Scotland.

After the war, when St Ives had ceased to be a pivotal centre of modernism, Barns-Graham's work and importance as an artist was sidelined, in part by an art-historical consensus that she had been only as a minor member of the St Ives school.

In old age, however, she received belated recognition.

She received honorary doctorates from the University of St Andrews in 1992 and later from the universities of Plymouth in 2000, Exeter in 2001 and Heriot Watt Universities in 2003.

In 1999 she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Scottish Watercolourists.

She was awarded a CBE in 2001, the same year that saw the publication of the first major monograph on her life and work, written by Lynne Green — W.Barns-Graham : A Studio Life (Lund Humphries).

This publication was followed in 2007 by The Prints of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: a complete catalogue by Ann Gunn (also a Lund Humphries publication).

Her work is found in several major public collections in Britain.