The thesis explores the phenomenon of a `Newlyn school'; it contextualizes its origins in the later 1880s focussing on the artistic and cultural values associated with it and examines subsequent developments. The thesis looks at the settlement of artists in Newlyn in the 1880s, and the connections between developments there and the impact of the work of Bastien- Lepage as well as making links to the contemporary Nature Movement in England. It considers the painting of rural imagery `on the spot' and the concern to achieve `open-air effects'. The latter did not necessarily imply painting out of doors indeed it could include interiors. Artists working in Newlyn attracted patronage from philanthropic industrialists desirous of effecting beneficial influence on the urban poor. This appears to account for the early interest in Newlyn-based artists in Birmingham. It is argued that there was nothing unique about the interests of artists who settled in Newlyn nor any interest in developing a special `school' in the early 1880s. However, after the work of Frank Bramley and Stanhope Forbes began to interest critics in London matters changed. While Braniley's A Hopeless Dawn (RA 1888) stimulated the notion that there was something special about Newlyn art, it was the highly ambitious Forbes who , profited most from the concept. In the following decade he successfully promoted himself as the guiding light of Newlyn art. The thesis also considers how the promotion of a `Newlyn school' in 1889 coincided with the concerns at the Royal Academy to promote a national form of art to counter the threat of Whistlerian internationalism and other types of modernism. However, subsequent coverage was unenthusiastic and short-lived. The thesis concludes with exploring how Forbes subsequently mythologized Newlyn, identifying the `school' with his own artistic persona.