Allen G Folliott-Stokes was a free-spirited painter, poet and author known for impressionistic landscapes and enthusiastic Cornish travel guides. He was a contributor to the late 19th-century ‘St Ives School’.

Hailing from the leafy parish of Goring in Oxfordshire, Folliott-Stokes’ father was the local Vicar, so one assumes he was raised in a rather pious and evangelical setting. At around 15, he enrolled at a private school in Drayton run by the Reverend Arthur James Williams, but two years later, became an apprentice in the Royal Navy - following in his grandfather’s footsteps. Given the artist’s somewhat nomadic sensibilities, which we’ll discuss later, it’s interesting to consider whether his naval pursuits were motivated by a desire to rebel.

By 1881, he’d returned to civilian life and settled in Bridgnorth where he worked as a land agent. His role involved establishing relationships with affluent landowners and this is perhaps how he came to know Charlotte Vansittart Frere, who became his wife a year later. Her father was a barrister and her mother worked at the House of Commons. From this point on, it appears that Folliott-Stokes abandoned the desk in favour of artistic pursuits, presumably encouraged by Charlotte. One assumes that he must’ve received an annuity from his father to support his decision.

The pair soon moved to Wood Green, London, where he struggled to establish himself. Exhibitions were relatively few during this period and it seems that he became increasingly restless. In 1889-1890, he exhibited with the Ipswich Fine Art Club and recorded his address as The Cottage, Southwold, Suffolk.

It’s evident from his writings that Folliott-Stokes was a rather spiritual soul with a deep connection to the natural world. In a poem titled ‘Cornishman’ from 1909, he described the “rolling moor” as “soft kissed by the golden sun” and “wrapt in a robe of lace-like mist”. It was inevitable that he would ultimately swap the industrial edifice of the capital for the raw sublimity of Cornwall.

The 1891 census records him as residing, together with his wife and daughter, in St Ives with William Berriman, a local shipwright, and Mary Berriman. It seems that he retained a London address, probably a studio, while actively working in St Ives. Inspired by his picturesque surroundings, in 1897, he debuted at the Royal Academy with ‘A Light Night’ and ‘Moonrise’ - two atmospheric nocturnal views. 

Capturing the Cornish coastline under moonlight became his raison d'être and his oils were brimming with spirit. Despite his apparent lack of formal teaching, he worked in a fluid style somewhat akin to the Impressionists. You could say he was a student of nature herself, immersing himself within it.

As time passed, he was slowed by illness and the frequency of his output suffered as a result. In around 1902, he switched to writing as a career, with painting consigned to occasional local shows. His success as a writer surpassed his achievements as a painter and he published several popular travel guides along with occasional artist biographies. In 1910, for ‘The Studio’ magazine, he described the artist Julius Olsson (1864-1942) as possessing the “ability to interpret the sea throughout the whole gamut of its phenomena - from the fury of the storm to the sensuous beauty of the calm”. Olsson was an inspiration and we’ve published this review in our directory.

Folliott-Stokes lived to the grand old age of 84, spending his final decades rambling over the moors, grounded by the ethereal qualities of their rugged solemnity. He was well-loved and referred to as an “artist, author, cyclist, tramp and philosopher” who was “equally at home with brush and pen” - a “Bard of Cornish Scenery”.

“If it be true that ‘all the world's a stage’, then for Heaven's sake let us act our parts amongst the most perfect scenery”. Folliott-Stokes, Our Hinterland, The Cornishman (1905).

Exhibited

Royal Academy, Royal Society of British Artists and Nottingham Museum & Art Gallery. 

Timeline

1855

Born in Goring, Oxfordshire, to Revd William Henry Stokes, the Vicar of Goring, and Emily Sophia Stokes (nee Gardiner). He was a twin with Emily Dorothea.

1861

Lived in Goring with his parents, three siblings, and five staff.

1871

Lived/studied in Drayton, Oxfordshire, at a private school run by Revd Arthur James Williams, the Rector of Drayton. Occupation recorded as ‘Pupil’.

1873-1876

Apprenticed in the Royal Navy.

1874

Served aboard the ‘Southern Belle’ and travelled to Rockingham, Queensland, Australia.

1881

Lived in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, with Sarah Taylor and her family. Worked as a land agent.

1882

Married Charlotte Vansittart Frere in Paddington Green, London. Charlotte’s father was a barrister and her mother a clerk at the House of Commons.

Turned to art as a career.

1887

Lived in Wood Green, London.

1889

Lived in Wood Green, London.

1889-1890

Exhibited with the Ipswich Fine Art Club and recorded his address as The Cottage, Southwold, Suffolk.

C. 1890

Moved to St Ives, Cornwall.

1891

Together with his wife and daughter, he lived with William Berriman, a shipwright, and Mary Berriman in St Ives, Cornwall. Occupation recorded as ‘(Artist) Painter’.

1894

Lived in Wood Green, London.

1896

Lived in Wood Green, London.

1897

Debuted at the Royal Academy with ‘A Light Night’ and ‘Moonrise’.

1899

Lived in Wood Green, London.

1901

Lived alone in St Ives, Cornwall. Occupation recorded as ‘Artist (Painter)’. Listed as Married.

1902

Appears to have switched careers and focused on writing.

C. 1906

Undertook a tour of Russia, Turkey and Italy.

1911

Lived alone in St Ives, Cornwall. Occupation recorded as ‘Author’.

1913

Referred to by ‘artist, author, cyclist, tramp and philosopher’ in a book review by Herbert Thomas.

1915

Lived in St Ives, Cornwall.

1939

Died in Reading. 

Reviews

St Ives Weekly Summary (1908)

“Mr. A. G. Folliott-Stokes, the artist-author, whose novel ‘A Moorland Princess’ attracted considerable attention a season or two ago, has written a little book entitled "From St. Ives to the Land's End." The book will be profusely illustrated, and deals in a vivid, picturesque style with the coast, the moors, the valleys, the prehistoric monuments and the flora and fauna of the northern coast of West Cornwall. Mr. Folliott-Stokes is well qualified for his task, as he has lived in the far West Country for many years, and knows it well. He is sometimes called ‘The Man of the Moor’ by the artists' colony in Newlyn and St. Ives.”

Cornishman (1910)

“At Paddington, I bumped into Mr. Folliott Stokes, our Corach artist and descriptive writer, whose books on Cornish coast scenery are now indispensable to the tourist with literary tastes.

Mr. Stokes looks less like a magnificent traveller than formerly, for he has been so ill that he looked into the ‘jaws of death’ at as close a range as the men who took part in the hurricane charge of the Light Brigade; but he is a valuable asset to the County, and as soon as he can get back to the hinterland he loves so well I think we can so prime him with pasties and cream and the medicinal climate of the County that he will soon recover his girth and grip again.”

The Sheffield Daily Independent (1910)

“Timely in its issue, Messrs. Greening and Co.'s ‘From Devon to St. Ives’ (18.), from the pen of A. G. Folliot Stokes, is graphically written. It is much more than a mere guidebook. The author is familiar with his ground, and has seen angry seas and life in peril where but a few days later he has viewed smiling waters and holiday-makers seeking pleasure. Attractively written, the book is also very attractively illustrated by photographs of Cornish coast scenery, which are worth the full price of the book.”

The St Ives Weekly Summary (1913)

“Mr. A. G. Folliott-Stokes is equally at home with brush and pen. His ‘Moorland Princess’ was a Cornish romance full of charm and witchery, and his love of Cornwall has found expression in books about cur moors and coast which deservedly find favour among those who come to Cornwall to rediscover its scenic beauties. But Mr. Folliott-Stoke was first of all an artist, and although an illness and literary work for a time delayed his movements in the realm of the painter, he comes forward this year with a group of Cornish paintings, full of the breath and feeling of the moors he knows and loves so well. 

One of these he entitles ‘On the Moor’ and you see the bars upland with its wet tracks, its grey granite boulders, the clumps of sombre furze and the rainy sky ready to empty itself of its wintry burden. In ‘Moorland Pines’ we see a similar waste with a few trees which have been the sport of the hurricanes which howl over the Cornish moors and wrench off all but the strongest or most pliable branches. Stark and lone they rise above such vegetation as can live through the winter, and we catch a glimpse of lonely hills in the distance. 

Quite in another vein is the ‘Chalk Pit where buglosses grow.’ Here the mellow herbage of the hill shows up the bright blue of the flowers that grow by the road leading into the chalk pit, and there is a subtle harmony running through the picture. It is evident that Mr. Folliott-Stokes has not only regained his physical vigour but that mental keenness which enables an artist to imbue his work with freshness and truth.”

Writing

Cornishman (1909)

“Who does not love the rolling moor 
Soft kissed by the golden sun, 
Or wrapt in a robe of lace-like mist 
When the summer's day is done 
For the sun is lord of love and life, 
And the Moorland is his favourite wife. 
Those who have drunk from her bosom fair, 
Need no church or surpliced priest 
To mumble matins or turn to the east, 
To gabble a garbled prayer.
The moor has altars where'er you turn, 
The grace of God is on rock and burn, 
And His voice in the scented air.”

The Studio: International Art (1910)

Julius Olsson, Painter of Seascapes.

“A big man with a big heart, who paints big pictures with big brushes in a big studio - this is the first impression of Julius Olsson. The second is that these broadly seen and broadly painted pictures are instinct with the spirit and power of the sea, and remarkable for their extremely fine colour schemes, which embrace the most delicate and subtle harmonies and the boldest contrasts. This ability to interpret the sea throughout the whole gamut of its phenomena - from the fury of the storm to the sensuous beauty of the calm is probably to some extent a legacy from the distant past. 

Mr. Olsson, though an Englishman born and bred, is a descendant of Norsemen. In him we see a living illustration of how faithfully Nature preserves her types throughout the centuries. The sea-blue eyes, the broad shoulders, the large limbs and hands; all these have come to him from those old rovers who, more than a thousand years ago, roamed the Northern seas because they loved them. In their twentieth-century descendant this love is not one whit abated: it merely expresses itself differently. It has quickened a naturally observant nature into one of extraordinary receptivity. 

His ability for noting and remembering the thousand forms which the ever-moving water is constantly assuming, the many delicate gradations of colour which, reflected from sky and cloud, chase each other over that palpitating surface, is most remarkable. This ability, one might almost call it intuition, enables him to give us the majestic onward sweep of the waves more thoroughly, I think, than any other English painter. It also enables him to render, in chords of wonderful beauty and fidelity, those subtle colours which, under certain conditions of light and atmosphere, the sea reveals to those who are in sympathy with her, and who have given the best years of their lives to studying her.

Up to a certain point the sea presents no overwhelming difficulty. To the trained craftsman, a blue sea, or a green sea, with foam-crested waves, and here and there a passing ship, beneath a blue or grey sky, are well within his power. This is the conventional seascape, so familiar to most of us on the walls of our annual exhibitions. The water is blue, the sky is blue, the clouds are white or grey, and so is the foam which leaps audaciously at the bows of the hurrying vessels. What more do you want? Nothing more, of course, until the right man comes along - the true ‘sacer vates’ with the inspired vision - and shows us (the men in the street) that there is something more. 

It is ever thus. Prophets or seers, call them what you will, in the Arts or in the Sciences, must of necessity be few and far between, and in advance of their age. They are consequently misunderstood. Even the most intelligent of us are swathed in platitudes and custom as securely as a mummy in cloth. It is given to but a small minority to think independently of convention, and to bring an unbiased mind to the contemplation of any new thing. Such and such a thing must be so, because it always has been so, is the formula, or rather parrot cry, with which all independent thought is met. Remember how Rodin's new visions were ridiculed for many years, even in artistic France. Even Darwin's brother scientists, who ought to have known better, scoffed at his ‘Origin of Species,’ which now forms one of the stoutest pillars in the citadel of acquired knowledge. And so in painting. There was a time, not very long ago, when there were those who scoffed because Julius Olsson saw in waves and their foaming crests all the colours of the opal because he gave to those creaming gulfs of ‘cruel crawling foam’ that divide one Atlantic roller from another shades of exquisite violet, and the complementary chords of those brilliant primary colours that glow on the broad cheeks of the great cumulus clouds which sometimes tower like Alps toward the zenith, and which the rising or setting sun incarnadines. 

Many of the critics, whose knowledge of the sea was in some cases limited to a glimpse of it from the end of a Brighton pier, or through the window of a Brighton hotel, shrieked loud and shrill. They know better now. They have learned that, while foam may be all the colours of the rainbow, it is rarely, if ever, white. White, as far as colour goes, is a negative condition, which, when it belongs to a transparent or crystalline substance, such as foam or snow, is extremely sensitive to and ready to assume the colours of surrounding objects, when contact is direct. When it is interrupted, or, in other words, when foam and snow are in shadow, they assume, as I have already pointed out, the complementary tones of the brilliant hues with which the sun paints the heavens. Thus it is that a great sea painter is, or could be if he chose, a great snow painter. To him, the silent peaks of Darien will reveal their secrets as readily as the rolling sea. Mr. Olsson's pictures of the higher Pyrenees, prove him to be no exception to this rule.

But there is another gift that a man must possess before he can become a great marine painter, viz., that of rendering the dignity, grandeur and beauty of the clouds. This is not so necessary to those artists who use the sea as a setting for shipping, or for some dramatic incident, such as the departure or return of a lifeboat, or a miraculous draught of fishes. These men use the sea more or less as a fabric on which to weave their story. To the man, however, who goes to the sea for all his inspirations, who loves it with the passion of a Byron, whose soul thrills to all its moods, the pageant of the clouds is of the utmost importance. Whether as broad-winged heralds of the storm, blushing hand-maids of the lusty old Sun God, or pale novices of the Virgin Moon, they mean so much in all his visions of the sea. They add passion to its fury and pathos to its softer moments; and, like the accompanying chords to some sweet melody, they increase a thousand-fold the sublime harmony of the original theme. 

And so we find Julius Olsson treating the clouds with the same breadth of vision and sympathetic insight that mark his handling of the sea. No other man that I know of gets so near to that sense of sublime height and godlike isolation with which the great cumuli impress the mind. I mean particularly those immense masses of vapour which, sometimes in unsettled weather, or when the air is charged with electricity, tower like mountains towards the zenith, exhibiting all the contours and effects of light and shade of a range of snowy Alps, as they rear their mighty shoulders fretted with shadows into the boundless blue of heaven. And few men have given us so truthfully the menace of the hurrying storm cloud: that dark curtain of vapour which approaches so rapidly, and in whose murky depths swings the cradle of the wind.

There is one other mood of the sea that Mr. Olsson has made peculiarly his own. It is that tender half-time between day and night, when the moon, as yet but a pale disc, peeps over the distant horizon and lays a ribbon of golden sheen across the face of the waters. It is a moment of intense beauty. The sun has gone, and with him the pomp and splendour of the day: and Nature with a sigh of regret is turning her chastened gaze towards the milder splendours of the queen of night. Everything is enveloped in a tender after-glow: there are no strong contrasts of tone. The mystery and charm is one of colour only hence its attraction for our artist.

In the treatment of foam, Mr. Olsson holds, as I have already indicated, a foremost place. Many men have given us truthful renderings of breaking waves, but few have had the courage or the knowledge to treat, except as a mere sketch, that fretwork of wrinkled foam, into which the churned-up water has been lashed by the force of the advancing and receding waves, as they hurl themselves on sand and shingle, or chase each other over the harbour bar. The endless forms of the multitudinous ripples and eddies, the endless curves with their endless intersections, overlappings, rushes and rebounds, must of necessity baffle all but the keenest and most ardent of observers. 

For although by certain tricks and dexterity of handling some resemblance may be obtained, the most accurate drawing is necessary to give the sense of power and ceaseless motion which we find in all Mr. Olsson's seascapes. And this ability has been acquired by him through many years of constant and loving observation and study. The sea cannot be painted as can the component parts of a landscape. It is impossible to set up a canvas and imitate bit by bit. Not for one single second does any portion of the sea remain in the same position, or under the same effect of light. It is therefore only by an infinite number of mental and sketchbook notes that an accurate knowledge is obtained. 

For twenty years Mr. Olsson has been taking these notes and storing them in his mind; not only from the rocky shores of Cornwall where he lives, and where the Atlantic rollers come thundering after their three thousand miles of unimpeded progress from distant Labrador but also from the deck of his yacht, in which he has been in the habit of cruising summer after summer. He knows the coast from the Scillies to the Isle of Wight as well as most men know their way to the nearest railway station. It is this consuming passion that has made him what he is - in many ways our greatest sea-painter. He thinks in waves and storm clouds, in rainbows and driving mist. He knows where the wind is, what the tide is doing and the age of the moon as well as any pilot, and he uses this knowledge as only a great artist can.”

The Cornishman (1905)

“Our Hinterland. 

How many people in Penzance and St. Ives really know the wild Hinterland, that rises almost at their doors and stretches in unbroken loveliness and dignity to Carn Brea, which towers above the Sennen plain and keeps watch upon the setting sun, as it sinks behind the long, low, uneven silhouette of the Scillies? This lone land, which man has not yet conquered and over whose heath clad surface he so seldom treads, still remains one of the sanctuaries of nature. How different are these oases of solitude to the rest of agricultural England, where the land has been scratched and sacrificed out of all recognition and from which Pan and his attendant nymphs have vanished long ago. 

But these tor crowned hills that face ne sea, these secluded valleys, hung with the gold of the whin-bush and the purple of the heath, these laughing streams which hurry to the great water, guarded by rocks, veined and patterned more cunningly than human brain e're dreamed of, even in the magic cities of the East, or the garden bowers of old Japan, stir the finest instincts of the soul and kindle that spirit of poetry which, though inarticulate, lies latent in almost every heart. They also lead back the imagination beyond the range of history. 

For on these lonely hills stand, almost as they left them, the tombs and dwellings of our dead ancestors. And while we contemplate these massive cromlechs, beside which our oldest cathedrals are but as yesterday, these sacred circles, which still testify to the simple faith that raised them, these beehive huts, which sheltered those children of nature from the roving wolves and in earlier times from the hyenas and woolly bears, there comes into the mind a quaint conceit perhaps, but one strange-ly persistent, that this land of eloquent silences and Homeric storms is waiting for return of that dim twilight of the race, when our forefathers, throughout thousands of years, lived and died upon its slopes. 

Though we cannot desire to go back to those rude times, it would be well if we could again acquire something of the daily intimacy with Nature which those old brains possessed. They knew the innermost secrets of these rocks and streams, for they shared with them the storm and sunshine, and at the call of death fearlessly gave their bodies to the rich dark mould, that through it they might pass again, on the breath of the flowers into the glorious effulgence of Baldur the Beautiful. Since then we have wrested many a secret from the bowels of the earth. Science has laid her hand upon Nature's name and put a bit in the mouth of the elements. 

We do not yet ride upon the wings of the wind; but enthusiastic aeronauts assure us that such a consummation is not far distant. But with all these material advantages, are we really happier, are we really saner than our progenitors of old? Our life's blood is no longer tinctured and purified by the free winds of Heaven and the tonic burning of the Sun. We are leaving the land to huddle together in huge cities. There beneath a cloud of smoke which hangs like a pall over these ‘wens’ as Cobbett called them, we jostle each other on fetid pavements and in stuffy offices in a feverish nerve-racking race for wealth, utterly oblivious of the fact that wealth without health is as ashes in the mouth. In this universal scramble we seem to have lost that delicate sense of proportion and of the harmonies generally that was so conspicuous in the buildings (ecclesiastical and domestic) in the furniture and decoration of the middle ages and throughout Elizabethan and Stuart times. How could it be otherwise? We hurry along, mostly on all fours, quite regardless of the music of the spheres. Seldom have we time to stand upright beneath the sun, moon, or stars and possess our souls even for a day. 

We have to keep our noses to the ground, or perchance our neighbour might grab a coin or two. Scandal seems to be usurping the throne of wit, while journalism and not the classics is the mental pabulum. It is at our peril as a nation that we thus turn our back on Nature and the sweet sanity which she imparts. The bravest, cleanest living, most chivalrous people at present on the earth are probably the Japanese. Their public holidays are spent beneath the blossom of the trees; ours chiefly in the public houses. But let us return to the Hinterland, where every season of the year presents some special charm. 

Take the present time - Spring. There is nothing so exquisite in the whole realm of Nature as the slow conquest of Winter by Spring in this Western land. In most European countries and still more notably in Canada, Spring arrives with a haughty imperiousness, there is no resisting. W. flashing eyes she bids the cold tyrant depart, which he invariably does with magical celerity. But in the "delectable Duchy" and more particularly at its western extremity, where the feet of the granite cliffs are laved by the Gulf Stream, still warm from the tropic seas, the seasons merge into each other very gradually.

Summer lingers loth to go, Winter sprinkles Spring with snow. The gentle persistency with which Spring strives for the mastery affords the Nature lover a spectacle of enchanting interest. The battle seems so unequal, the combatants so ill-matched, coyly and shyly she enters the arena. 

When fair young Spring first lightly steps
To challenge Winter's sullen frown,
She bears no glittering spear aloft, 
Nor hurls defiant gauntlet down.
Her bonny limbs are not begirt, 
With triple brass or steel's defence;
Her only weapon is her love, 
Her shield her youthful innocence. 

At first her unobtrusive entrance escapes the eye of even the keenest observer. Presently, however, amid the cruel laughter of the storm, he will hear her soft sigh and sometimes at noontide and at evening he perceives the subtle aroma of her presence - felt but not seen. Soon he becomes aware that with deft fingers she has inserted a flower here and a flower there, till the tyrants' hoary locks are richly garlanded. But the victory is not yet. Again and again the boisterous bully flings the pretty maiden from him. He will not be persuaded by the presence of those pouting lips, the incense of those tender flowers, the violet mystery of those tear dimmed eyes. 

With a bitter blast he withers her flowers and sends her shivering away; only to return with the same gentle insistence and still more lavish gifts of flowers. At last the hard old heart is touched; the gentle pleading has prevailed: He rides away upon the wings of his winds and leaves the brave child free to work her mission of love upon an awakening world. The fair hands can now wave the magician's wand without let or hindrance and the sweet voice call forth the shy sisterhood of flowers. 

At her command the sea pinks star the shoulders of the hills, the campion hangs out it's white globes from many a fissure in the cliffs, bluebells and primrose carpet the banks of the streams, the whinbush glows with a golden glory amongst the blackthorn's fretted snow and the claw like fronds of the young bracken break through the velvet turf. And from out this wondrous symphony of colour there rises an exquisite symphony of sound. Land and sky become vocal with poems of praise. 

The cuckoo wanders to and fro, 
And his rich soprano flings 
To the deep love note of the crow, 
While the speckled throstle sings 
With a zest no other bird can show 
When the boy God spreads his wings.

And these wonderful harmonies are our inalienable birthright. They were placed on these primeval hills by the great Master for you and me. Every morning the sun raises the curtain of night and discloses them to the eyes of beast and bird, for ‘Beast and bird have seen and heard That which man knoweth not.’

But this need not be. If it be true that ‘all the world's a stage,’ then for Heaven's sake let us act our parts amongst the most perfect scenery. The drama of our lives will not lose thereby, take my word for it. If the eyes of your nearest and dearest shine brightly at you in the Morrab Gardens, or on the windy Malakof, they will emit an infinitely brighter effulgence when they reflect the blushing heath, as you together press the wild thyme above the whispering sea. Therefore take the first opportunity to leave the precincts of the town and wander to some heath clad cove or sun kissed hill; and as you drink in the incense of a thousand growing things and mark where the gorse bushes tumble their cataract of gold down to the azure sea, thank God in your hearts that these glories have still power to move you.”