A Penzance art gallery is staging an exhibition on one of the town’s most talented artists.

Penlee Gallery in Morrab Road will be hosting The Exceptional Harold Harvey until September 29.

A spokesperson said: “Harold Harvey was born 1874 and died 1941.

“This exhibition is a real visual treat and also has panels giving useful background information on the artist’s life, plus there is a lovely book to accompany the show.

“How simple his life seems compared with that of a contemporary artist today trying to find a career in a post modernist world of installations and concepts, grants and fellowships.

“Harold studied art in Penzance and Paris and settled in Newlyn, teaching at his own school of art, sending paintings to the Royal Academy shows and living happily with his wife Gertrude within the artists’ colony.

“He shows us the countryside in well observed detail and with colours that look as if they were painted yesterday. No doubt he used photography to supplement his knowledge.

“We see young women going out for an evening, hikers, miners, flower-pickers and beach goers. There are delightful interiors and twenties and thirties fashion depicted with such care.

“His style develops through the years. The compositions use rhythm and complexity to evoke a whole era and you can feel you’ve met the people and been to their homes and surroundings.

“I suppose everywhere there are artists carrying on this record of life in their own time which has a historical value as well as an aesthetic quality and Harold Harvey ’s paintings remain as such accomplished examples to inform and entertain us.”