THEY could be a gang of revolutionary conspirators bent on bringing down the Government, writes Simon Parker. Or a team of former footballing heroes gathered for a reunion. But in fact the 11 earnest-looking men posing for a photograph in 1884 were destined to become the greatest force in Victorian and Edwardian Cornish art.

Collectively, the likes of Stanhope Forbes, Walter Langley, Edwin Harris, Henry Scott Tuke, Albert Chevallier Tayler, William Wainwright, Frank Bodilly, Fred Millard, Frank Bramley, Blanford Fletcher and Ralph Todd have come to be known as The Newlyn School, their work prized by collectors and held in esteemed public galleries and museums throughout the world.

To mark the 125th anniversary of the photograph, Penlee House Gallery and Museum in Penzance is staging an exhibition intended as an introductory snapshot of the art colony's finest work. Entitled The Brotherhood Of The Palette: Newlyn School Paintings 1880-1900, the wide-ranging display not only features some of their best-loved oils and watercolours, but tries to gauge the impact of their presence in a traditional fishing community.

The likes of Stanhope Forbes, Walter Langley and Henry Scott Tuke were feted in their day, their paintings of Newlyn's working people being hung in the Royal Academy and other respected institutions. However, the modernist movement largely dismissed their work and they fell out of favour for decades until a major retrospective in the 1970s renewed public interest in their social commentary, technique and emotional depth.

Inspired by art being produced in Brittany in the early 1880s, a number of British painters were motivated to depict the everyday lives of fishing and farming communities, using muted tones to concentrate the eye on the effects of light. To such artists, Newlyn offered a wealth of subjects to paint and a picturesque setting that was both remote and yet within a mile or two of a mainline train service to London.

In 1884, Stanhope Forbes arrived in Newlyn to find a burgeoning art colony already at work. He soon became their leading light. The acclaim he received when his painting, Fish Sale On A Cornish Beach, was shown at the Royal Academy the following year made Newlyn famous and led yet more artists to move there.

The Brotherhood Of The Palette includes Fish Sale On A Cornish Beach alongside other major Newlyn School works such as Forbes's Off To The Fishing Grounds, Frank Bramley's Primrose Day, Norman Garstin's The Rain It Raineth Every Day, Walter Langley's The Sunny South, Elizabeth Forbes' School Is Out, Henry Scott Tuke's Taking A Spell, Edwin Harris's The Lesson, Harold Harvey's In The Whiting Grounds, and Walter Langley's But Men Must Work And Women Must Weep, together with more personal material such as a contemporary series of cartoons of the artists painted by Fred Hall.

As well as the "brothers" featured in the photographs, other key Newlyn School figures are included in the exhibition, alongside photographs and other ephemera.

Penlee House director Alison Bevan said: "Although Penlee House has become well known for showing Newlyn School works, this exhibition will be the first major show in more than 20 years to focus on the early works which made the Newlyn School internationally famous.

"Over the years, the term 'Newlyn School' has often been misapplied to anyone even vaguely associated with this area of Cornwall, regardless of date and style.

"Our exhibition aims to show what the term means in its strictest sense and to offer visitors the chance to revel in the glory years of rural realist painting.

"The exhibition provides a snapshot of the work produced by these artists at a time when their shared values, subjects and style led Stanhope Forbes to describe them as 'the brotherhood of the palette'."

Many of the works on show are on loan from public and private collections elsewhere, including several which have rarely, if ever, been shown publicly in Cornwall before.

The Brotherhood Of The Palette is at Penlee House Gallery and Museum from June 20 to September 12 and is open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm.