Biography for Walter Langley

Education

After studying design at the South Kensington School, London, Langley returned to Birmingham to work as a lithographer. He took up painting in the late 1870s.

Employment

Walter Langley was the first major artist to settle in Newlyn in Cornwall, and became one of the most important of the colony of artists there. In 1882, Langley moved to in Newlyn, and later lived in Penzance. His finest artwork was produced in the 1880s, mainly watercolours, although he later painted in oils. In keeping with the Newlyn tradition, the subjects of his paintings were typically Cornish fishermen and their families. In contrast to the characteristically bleak Newlyn ideal, much of Langley's work tended towards the sentimental.