Samuel John Lamorna Birch

Artist Biography

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Samuel John Lamorna Birch was born in Egremont, Cheshire, on 7 June 1869. As a boy he moved to Manchester and later to Halton, near Lancaster, working in an office or mill and painting at dawn or sunset before and after his work hours. As a result Samuel John Lamorna Birch was self-taught as an artist but he did spend a year in Paris at the Atelier Colarossi between 1895 and 1896.

From 1889 Samuel John Lamorna Birch regularly visited Cornwall and was influenced by Stanhope Forbes, who had settled at Newlyn in 1884 and who founded the Newlyn School of Art in 1899 with his wife Elizabeth Adela Armstrong. In 1897 Birch settled at St. Buryan moving in 1902 (the year of his marriage) to Lamorna, near Penzance. At this time there was an artist named Lionel Birch living in Newlyn and at the suggestion of Stanhope Forbes, Samuel John Birch took the additional name of Lamorna in order to distinguish himself.

A great deal of his work was carried out in Cornwall, but he did not confine himself to this area as he was a keen fisherman and he made frequent visits to Scotland, Wales, the North West of England and the West Country to indulge his twin passions of painting and fishing. Samuel John Lamorna Birch established an excellent reputation and exhibited his work widely, including 227 pictures at The Royal Academy, where he exhibited for fifty consecutive years between 1905 and his death on 7 January 1955 at Lamorna.

Samuel John Lamorna Birch exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the Manchester City Art Gallery and at the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours.

Works by Samuel John Lamorna Birch can be found in the Tate Gallery, London.

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