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The celebrated genre and figure artist William Banks Fortescue made a notable contribution to an artistic movement known as British Impressionism which developed out of artist colonies in Newlyn and St. Ives in the southwest of Cornwall. Born in Birmingham in 1850, Fortescue had originally trained as an engineer before switching his focus to painting. He traveled to study in Paris and then Venice in the early 1880s, where he may have encountered the British artist Frank Bramley, another Newlyn School artist. By 1884 he was exhibiting with the Birmingham Society of Artists and by the following year he was living in Newlyn. Fortescue originally lodged in Bell Vue with Mrs. Maddern, the same home as the artist Stanhope Forbes, and began to work alongside Forbes, Henry S. Tuke, Elizabeth Forbes, Walter Langley, Fred Hall, and Edwin Harris.
Artists began to visit Cornwall in large numbers during the 1880’s as part of a movement originating in France when painters sought inspiration far away from bustling urban centers. Much like the infamous artists’ colony of Pont Aven, Newlyn gained recognition as a source for British art with a foreign influence, as many young artists who settled there had also studied in France, as Fortescue had. The attraction for painters and sculptors in Newlyn was the endless amount of social realist subjects found in the self-sufficient, pre-industrial society, as well as an unusual clarity of light that was lost in the big cities. The Newlyn group was in favour of a plein air style of painting, one that echoed some ideals of the Impressionistic movement in France, but this artists’ colony succeeded in individualizing itself through the unique subject matter that surrounded them. Fortescue used local models to capture the daily activities and hardships of an active fishing community and specialized in narrative subjects showing work in the countryside such as woodcutting and blacksmithing. He thrived in this environment and was a lively contributor to the social life of the colony. He was highly regarded, painting with depth, richness of colour and realism while capturing the light and atmosphere of the region and the character of his figures. He moved to the Midlands, Lancashire and finally to the rival artistic community of St. Ives in 1894, where he settled in Treloyan Cottage and worked from the Malakoff Studio, continuing to portray rural activities.
In 1884, Fortescue was elected as an associate of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. He exhibited with The Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Royal Society of British Artists of which he was made a member in 1899, and between 1887 and 1901 he exhibited sixteen works at the Royal Academy. He died in St. Ives on 12th March 1924, aged 73.