ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the shifts and transformations that had already occurred in the representations of Cornwall in the years up to Augustus John's arrival, paving the way for a modernist interpretation before the Great War. Qualities to be regarded most essentially as un-English and identifiable with the pre-war construction of Cornwall emerge particularly in paintings of the rugged coastline and in the depiction of the male and female nude or semi-clothed figure posed on remote rocky shorelines and cliff-tops. For 'Cornwall', as John described it to John Quinn, was 'a most sympathetic country'. Laura Knight's healthy holiday-makers were also a significant departure from the type of childhood imagery typically produced in Cornwall – the sons of fisher-folk learning their trade, as depicted by Stanhope Forbes, or the local lads messing about in rowing boats by Henry Scott Tuke.
