St Ives
Art-rich, beach-framed fishing port
![Fishing boats Fishing boats](icon.jpg)
St Ives is a fishing port that spawned an art movement. With it’s golden beaches, heritage harbour and beautiful light, painters have long flocked here.
Beaches
St Ives is blessed by sandy beaches. Popular Porthminster sits just below St Ives train station. Harbour beach directly overlooks the fishing boats. Pint-sized Porthgwidden is backed by stylish beach huts. Porthmeor is popular with families, swimmers and surfers.
The St Ives School
St Ives’ reputation as a hub for modern and abstract art really took off between the 1940s and 1960s after people like Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham set up studios there. The naïve style of local fisherman and self-taught artist Alfred Wallis became celebrated too.
Text © Belinda Dixon
Images by Dr Bob Hall, Michael Livsey, Nana B Agyei, Phill Lister, Ray B's world