Mousehole, Penzance

Key facts

Catalogue Number

360
Title

Mousehole, Penzance
Date

1932
Artist

Alexander Stuart-Hill

Alexander Stuart-Hill (died 1948) had a studio in Chelsea and was known as a portrait and landscape painter. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy between 1920 and 1947. His London scenes of the Thames from different viewpoints, painted in the 1930s, and his portraits, very often of mayors, were exhibited at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
Stuart-Hill created this painting for Shell in 1932, including his own lettering in the original design. The painting gives a sense of vorticism, an artistic style that emerged in Britain in 1914 with the aim of creating art that expressed the dynamism of the modern world. The style saw a brief revival in the early 1930s, merging cubist fragmentation with hard-edged imagery.