Perhaps the best known of the representational St Ives Painters,
Park arrived in St Ives in 1899 having spent his youth working in
the cotton mills of his native Lancashire, and within six years he
was exhibiting at the Royal Academy. Park was encouraged in his painting
by Julius Olsson, one of the foremost of the nineteenth-century artists
who colonised St Ives, who founded a School of Landscape and Marine
Painting overlooking Porthmeor Beach. Under Olsson’s guidance
Park left to train in Paris in 1905, where he studied at the Atelier
Colarossi, and where he was introduced to impressionism. Returning
to St Ives in 1923 Park rapidly established himself as the foremost
naturalist painter of the fishing port, painting idyllic views of
the old town and harbour that are so familiar to us today. He continued
to exhibit at the Royal Academy until 1949, was elected member of
the Royal Society of Oil Painters in 1923, helped to found the St
Ives Society of Artists in 1927, and won gold medal at the Paris Salon
in 1934. His work is held in many national institutions including
the Tate and Manchester City Art Gallery.
References: Austin Wormleighton. John Anthony
Park and the painters of light. St Ives 1900-1950. 1998.
