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Samuel John Lamorna Birch, RA, RWS British, 1869 - 1955 Samuel John Birch was born in Egremont, Cheshire, on 7th 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 Birch was self-taught as an artist but he did spend a year in Paris at the Atelier Colarossi between 1895-96. Birch first visited West Cornwall in the late 1880s and settled in the Lamorna Valley in 1892. He adopted the epithet ‘Lamorna’ in 1895 to distinguish himself from fellow artist Lionel Birch (an idea suggested by Stanhope Forbes). He is regarded as the father figure of the later group of ‘Newlyn’ artists, which included Laura and Harold Knight, Alfred Munnings, Frank Gascoigne Heath, Stanley Gardiner and Charles and Ella Naper, forming a second artist’s colony in the Lamorna Valley, often referred to as the Lamorna group. Birch was elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1924 and was made a full Royal Academician (RA) eight years later. In his long and distinguished career, he exhibited over 200 works at the Royal Academy, as well as exhibiting throughout the country and abroad. Although he traveled and painted throughout the UK, Birch's work is permeated by his love of nature and his beloved Lamorna Valley, where he lived and worked until his death in 1955. |
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