On 20 October 2025, David Tovey gave a lecture to the Friends on the career of Lamorna Birch. This was planned to coincide with the new exhibition at Penlee House, ‘Lamorna Birch: Painter Laureate’, showing pictures from the late Austin Wormleighton’s collection.
David assessed a number of the highlights of the extraordinarily successful career of S.J.Lamorna Birch. These include his early visits to Boleigh Farm, his marriage and family life, his early snow paintings, the influences of and upon his Lamorna colleagues, his love of and skill at fishing, his election as an Associate and then a full member of the Royal Academy, his successful inter-relationships with patrons and print companies, his regular visits to Scotland, his trip to New Zealand in 1936-7, and his film and television appearances. At the end of a long career during which his work became internationally acclaimed and represented in public collections worldwide, he was still selling all his Academy exhibits and an astonishing number of prints.
David Tovey is an independent art historian who specialises in Cornish art and has written extensively on the subject and curated numerous exhibitions both at Penlee House and elsewhere. Since 2012, he has been the Editor of the Lamorna Society’s magazine, The Flagstaff (named after Birch’s home), and in 2022 produced the two-volume book Lamorna – An Artistic, Social and Literary History.
The paintings below represent some of the highlights:
