His Beloved St Ives

His Beloved St Ives: The Painter Gerard Wagner at the Cornish Art Colony 1924–1925

Gerard Wagner was a young art student at St Ives in the 1920s. He was seventeen years old when he became a full-time pupil of the post-impressionist painter John Anthony Park, with whom he enthusiastically embarked on a life-long appreciation of colour and love of painting. The elemental sway of the Cornish seacoast and the influence of the art colony and fishing community of St Ives remained a vital part of Wagner’s life and art. In 1926 he settled in Switzerland where he discovered new impulses in the arts and became especially interested in the relationship between colour and form. Thus Gerard Wagner’s pursuit of painting spanned over seven decades. In 1997, two years before his death, his work was celebrated with a retrospective at the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

Many black and white photographs and colour reproductions from Gerard Wagner’s work.

About the Author

Caroline Chanter, born 1950, is a painter trained at Exeter Art College, Leeds Polytechnic and at the M. Hauschka School for Artistic Therapy in Boll, Germany. Meeting Gerard Wagner in 1988 was the turning point of her life. She became his pupil and moved to Dornach, Switzerland where she could concentrate full-time on painting. She now teaches at a painting school near the Goetheanum in Dornach. She is currently writing a biography of Gerard Wagner and is working on other future publications about painting and colour.