It’s the light, that always strikes visitors who come to St Ives. Jutting out from the coastline, the town, which is surrounded by beaches, is bathed in a soft, romantic glow that makes everything look like Instagram-perfection: no filter necessary.
This is the reason why many prominent artists were drawn here and have left behind a rich heritage. As the sculptor Barbara Hepworth said of her adopted home: “The horizontal line of the sea and the quality of light and colour… reminds me of the Mediterranean light and colour, which so excites one’s sense of form.”
She wasn’t the only one. As the fishing industry dried up at the end of the 19th century, a new railway line brought in the out-of-towners. Bernard Leach – known as the father of British pottery – and the Japanese potter Shōji Hamada set up the Leach Pottery in 1920. But St Ives, like the rest of Cornwall, attracts outdoorsy-types as well as art tourists. Visitors to the Tate can step out into the garden to admire the surfers and kayakers on the beach below or traipse up onto a particularly admired section of the South West Coast Path, just meters from the gallery’s entrance.
