Norman Garstin (28 August 1847 – 22 June 1926) was an Irish artist, teacher, art critic and journalist associated with the Newlyn School of painters.

Garstin painted plein air and was influenced by Impressionism, Japanese works and James McNeill Whistler.

He then travelled to South Africa where he befriended Cecil Rhodes, worked as a journalist and was involved in government in Cape Town.

[3][5] As printed in 100 Years in Newlyn, Norman Garstin was: He was a man of intensely individual impulses and opinions, and incurred unpopularity at times through his views on war and other topics.

But he was a stimulating teacher and a shrewd critic, and had a true eye for a picture with old architecture and historic atmosphere, as well as a brush capable of rendering his intentions with right effect.

[2] Garstin said of the plein-air approach used by St Ives and Newlyn artists: They were "filled with this idea of a fresh unarranged nature to be studied in her fields, and by her streams, and on the margin of her great seas – in these things they were to find the motives of their art.

[8] His work consisted primarily of small oil panels in the plein air style, something he had picked up from the French Impressionists, like Manet.