With renewed interest in artists who worked in late-nineteenth-century colonies, the authors bring together the story of Britain’s far-flung coastal art colonies at Newlyn, St Ives, Lamorna, Walberswick, Staithes, Cullercoats, Cockburnspath and Kirkcudbright. Each colony was sited in a small community dependent on fishing or farming and far enough away from urban centres to retain much of their old customs, costumes and ways of life, yet reasonably accessible by rail and road. Many of the paintings produced at these eight colonies were concerned with rendering a ‘truthful’ depiction of a particular time and place, and can be seen as a celebration, almost, of various unique aspects of a British way of life that was even then fast disappearing.