From the archive: Pioneering Women

Sydney-born Barbara Tribe FRBS (1913-2000) settled in Penzance and made Cornwall her home. She was a long-standing member of the St Ives Society of Artists and lectured at Penzance School of Art. Tribe enjoyed a long and successful career, proclaiming “an artist never retires”. She practised and exhibited widely throughout her life, including producing portrait sculptures of Australian servicemen during the Second World War, and entering her sculpture “Embryo” into the Unknown Political Prisoner exhibition in 1953. In 1998, on winning the Society of Portrait Sculptors Jean Masson Davidson silver medal, she was described as the ‘Doyenne of Cornish sculptors’. Her work and career embraced different styles: including naturalistic children and babies; abstract totemic pieces; organic and, often, erotic forms.