painting, depicting a seaside harbour landscape with the bridge and boats, unsigned, stamped by auction house, framed and glazed

Dimensions aprox.

Picture size 11 x 14 inches

Frame size 19 x 22 inches

Good condition, some singes of age, please see photos

James Marshall Heseldin (1887–1969)

The four hundred or so works, mainly watercolours, by James (J.M.) Heseldin are in two distinct categories - paintings of Cornwall and of the U.S.A. that represent and reflect the two important aspects and areas of his life story.

A Yorkshireman, born in Leeds in 1887, he trained and worked as an architectural draughtsman, specialising in terrcotta, before emigrating to the U.S.A. when in his early 20's. On his arrival in the States, he applied for and obtained American citizenship and was consequently eligible for call-up in the U.S. armed forces when the U.S.A. entered the arena of the First World War. In the event, however, and perhaps fortunately for him, his eyesight was not of the required standard and, instead of being called to the colours, he spent the war years as a draughtsman in a shipyard.

It was when the war ended that he spent an extended painting holiday in this country - he had long been an enthusiastic watercolourist-and it was then that he first came to Cornwall: a visit which was to change the whole course of his life. At Lamorna he met, fell for, and became engaged to, "a Newlyn maid", Lily Paul, who afterwards made the journey from Newlyn to New Jersey where they became man and wife in the village of Rocky Hill near Princetown, New Jersey.

Their daughter was bom there in 1922 and named, appropriately enough, after the place where they had first met and spent their first day together-Lamorna.

Following several years flirting with the terracotta industry, chiefly in New York, plus a spell at running an art shop and picture framing business in Connecticut, and subsequent to the Great Depression, James Heseldin and his family retumed to the UK.

and to Cornwall, living in Newlyn where the artist rented a studio and started painting full-time.

It was not long before he was exhibiting in Newlyn Art Gallery, alongside such as the doyen of the Newlyn School, Stanhope Forbes. S.J. Lamorna Birch and Dod Procter, and, of course, his mentor James Gutteridge Sykes.

Apart from a brief period in Lancashire, when he again worked in the terracotta industry, he and his family were to spend the of their lives in Cornwall. In the early 1950's, James Heseldin and his wife Lily left Newlyn to live in St. Austell with their daughter Lamoms and her husband, where he continued painting, exhibiting with the St. Austell Art Society and showing and selling his work throughout the county from Falmouth to Penzance, until shortly before he died in 1969.

For many years he was a regular exhibitor with Mr John Laity, when he was running his shop and gallery at the bottom of Morrab Road in Penzance, who remembers him with affection and admiration for his "always meticulous approach to art"

For many years he was a regular exhibitor with Mr John Laity, when he was running his shop and gallery at the bottom of Morrab Road in Penzance, who remembers him with affection and admiration for his "always meticulous approach to art.

While his pictures are detailed and the influence of his architectural training is readily apparent, James Heseldin's works possess a liveliness, a sparkle and joie de vivre, a sense of the artist's presence, the undeniable and vital factor of his having "been there", that lift them beyond the mundane.

Apart from all else, his paintings have considerable historic, even archival, value and interest. Their sense of period, of the 20's and 30's, captured in the cars and costumes, cottages and churches, that fill his compositions, is paramount

Indeed, part of the fun, particularly in his Cornish landscapes, lies in attempting to identify the actual places depicted. While much may have changed he records a number of features, for example, from the "Balcony" to the "Narrows" in Newlyn, that have since disappeared, enough remains to make the game of guessing where each particular location might be still pleasing.

There is considerable charm, too, in the fact that several of these pictures carry the artist's working notes, from "deeper shadows" to "door not so wide". Then, too, some of them offer extremely good value, two for the price of one, in fact, with the artist having used both side of his paper,

From his "Big Apple" paintings, its bridges and buildings, the white limestone facade of St. Peter's Lutheran Church to Washington Square, pictures that conjure up, and could well be illustrations for, the novels of the New York author Henry James: to his Cornish paintings, the selling of fish at St. Ives - seagulls were obviously as much nuisance then as they are now-the slate-hung comers of Newlyn and Mousehole, not to mention the majesty of St. Michael's Mount, James Heseldin's works evoke nostalgia for both a U.S.A. and Comwall that have all but vanished - the likes of them will not be seen again.