Norman Garstin: Poppies

Norman Garstin (1847-1926) was an Irish artist, teacher, art critic and journalist associated with the Newlyn School of painters. After completing his studies in Antwerp and Paris, Garstin travelled around Europe and painted some of his first professional paintings while on the journey. Garstin painted plein air and was influenced by Impressionism, Japanese works and James McNeill Whistler. He, along with his family moved to Newlyn in 1886 and became a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists, and he was a founding member of the Newlyn Art Gallery.

For Garstin and his Impressionist forbears, vermilion dots of poppies that were scattered across a Cornish field in midsummer helped accentuate the colour and tone of surrounding meadow grass, to make it ‘live’. Monet famously established the subject in the 1870s and 80s with views of poppy fields at Argenteuil and Vétheuil, by which time British and American Impressionists were also painting summer meadows enlivened by spots of red. 

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HC-1518: card size 7" x 5" (178mm x 127mm)