‘The Breadwinners’ by Walter Langley

This painting is a wonderful example of the work of Walter Langley (1852-1922), who is remembered as the founder of the Newlyn School of plein air artists and for his social realist portrayals of working class figures in the local community. At over one meter tall and more than 2 meters wide, this picture gives monumentality to the working women depicted, expressing Langley’s sympathy with the local fishing community in Newlyn.

The painting shows three elderly women carrying baskets of fish along the beach at Newlyn at low tide, with fishing boats visible in the background and other fisherfolk gathered on the beach; a horse-drawn cart and the end of Newlyn’s South Pier are visible in the background to the right. This pier with its distinctive lighthouse often appeared in Langley’s works, as in the two examples below, and can still be seen today.

Langley’s medium of choice was watercolours and he was a prominent member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, but in the period before painting this scene he had come to feel that oil paintings attracted more attention at the Royal Academy, which seems to have influenced his decision to paint a monumental work in oil on canvas for submission to the RA. Langley exhibited this oil on canvas work at the Royal Academy in 1896, where the picture was hung prominently at eye level, and well received. The Morning Post’s critic praised Langley’s, '... realism and truth to atmospheric effect that manifest at once the keenness of his observation and the practised skill which guides his hand.' Langley also produced the same scene in two watercolours, one a study for the right hand figures (43 x 59 cm) and the other showing the full composition (47 x 62 cm) which is now in the Penlee Museum’s collection.

The title ‘Breadwinners’ reflects the harsh reality of daily life for the local women in the fishing community and pays tribute to their endurance. While men faced injury and death from shipwrecks and other dangers associated with fishing, the situation was not rosier for women, who sold fish in order to earn money with which feed their families. Even into old age, women had to persevere with the backbreaking work of carrying heavy sodden baskets, worn with a strap across the forehead, laboriously walking from the beach at low tide into town and beyond. Langley has chosen to depict the women in colours closely relating to the sea and rocks among which the women walk, showing their close connection to the natural environment.

The painting was recently acquired by The Bowerman Charitable Trust, who contacted Simon Gillespie in order to have a formal assessment of the condition of the picture and a treatment proposal in order to bring the picture back to looking its best.

On assessing the picture, Simon observed that the picture had been treated relatively recently, perhaps in the last 50-30 years, when a partial removal of some of the discoloured old varnishes was carried out, a new varnish applied, and some retouching added in an imprecise manner. At some point in its history, the areas of lighter coloured paint in the picture had been cleaned quite harshly, causing some abrasion to the original paint. On the other hand, a discoloured slightly opaque varnish layer had been left on the areas of dark paint, where it was causing pronounced shiny patches in reflected light but also creating a visual imbalance between light and dark areas in the picture and having a flattening effect on the depiction of details in the areas of darker paint such as the women’s upper clothing. The overall colouring in the picture was slightly subdued by the recent varnish which had discoloured to a slightly grey/yellow colour. The retouching was especially noticeable in the sky and its presence confirmed by looking under ultraviolet light which showed broadly applied strokes of retouching, probably applied to areas of thinness in the original paint caused by abrasion during past amateurish cleaning.

One of the fascinating aspects of this picture was that there were areas where it was possible to see that in the course of painting this work, the artist had changed his mind about the placement and scale of some of the elements in the composition. A real insight into the artist’s mind at work! It was possible to see these because the uppermost paint layer had gradually become slightly translucent over time (as oil paint naturally does), revealing a ghostly shape of the artist’s earlier composition beneath. For example, the artist had originally painted the lighthouse on the end of the pier on a much larger scale: it can be seen on close inspection as a slightly darker domed shape in the sky behind the lighthouse. Similarly, the boats that are lined up in front of the pier were originally painted bigger and taller, and it is possible to see the vertical strokes of their masts in the sky above the pier. These ‘pentimenti’ (that is the name given to a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas or panel) are also visible in UV light.

Continuing the assessment of the picture and its condition: the structure of the painting was sound. In severe reflecting and raking light, there was a pronounced disrupted surface of raised cracks in the structure of the paint, caused by fluctuations in relative humidity in the environment where the picture had previously been housed: perhaps it had been hung on an external wall or in a slightly damp room. The cracks were to be found in the areas of the canvas that are not protected by the buffering effect of the stretcher bars on the reverse. There was therefore a slight impression of the stretcher bars where there were no cracks. The absence of cracks in the parts of the canvas that had been protected by the stretcher bars demonstrates how important it is to have the reverse of canvas paintings covered with a backboard to buffer against changing humidity levels.

On closer inspection there was also a further network of very fine drying cracks; these were most noticeable in the areas of dark paint and were showing the white preparation layers beneath the paint. Some of these had been artistically retouched by an amateurish restorer and the retouching was slightly inaccurate, covering original paint.

The ‘Breadwinners’ painting was unlined, and there was a slight lack of tension in the canvas. Viewing the picture from the reverse, Simon observed that the wooden stretcher was broken at all four corners, making it unsafe.

On the basis of his assessment of the condition of the picture, Simon put together a treatment proposal, which was sent to the owners. We received approval from the owners to proceed, and treatment began. Firstly, the painting was removed from its frame and surface cleaning was carried out including dry dusting to remove loose surface dirt from the front and back of the canvas. After testing to tailor-make an appropriate, safe and effective cleaning solution, the various uneven varnish layers were carefully removed as well as the past retouching. This process revealed the artist’s original paint layer. It also revealed the areas of slight abrasion that the painting had suffered through past harsh cleaning treatments, and the light drying cracks that had naturally occurred as the oil paint dried over time.

The canvas was then removed from its stretcher and treated under controlled conditions to bring the areas of cracked paint into plane. We had a new stretcher made. The edges of the original canvas were strengthened in a process called strip-lining, whereby a narrow strip of canvas is adhered to the edge of the original canvas to add strength to the edge in order to allow us to then attach the canvas onto its new stretcher and tension it.

Pinpoint retouching was then carried out to the areas where the paint was abraded, and some of the small networks of drying cracks were reduced with pinpoint retouching to an acceptable level. A final thin semi-matt protective varnish was applied. The picture was then secured back into its frame.

The picture was delivered to The Bowerman Charitable Trust at Champs Hill in the south of England, and we received the following lovely email: ”Breadwinners arrived yesterday to gasps of astonished admiration. So grateful to you all for your work on our behalf.” It was unveiled during the Trust’s spring 2022 exhibition ‘Classic Newlyn (1880-1910)’. Simon had the pleasure of speaking at the opening of the exhibition, giving a presentation about the treatment process.