The Blacksmith's Shop by the Old Bridge, Newlyn

In 1906 Harold Harvey painted the busy blacksmith's shop on the approach to Newlyn Bridge. The central motif is the shoeing of a carthorse, observed by a little girl in a white pinafore. Away to the right, on the bridge's steep incline, a donkey and cart approaches in full sunlight. This vital stone bridge over the Coombe river linking Newlyn and Penzance, along with the local blacksmith's, had already been painted by Stanhope Forbes, as separate pictures before 1906, but Harvey now brings them together into a unified picture of daily life. In 1912 he would to return to this location to concentrate exclusively on the bridge in The Baker Boy, Newlyn (Private Collection).