10:56am Friday 20th April 2007
A FEW months ago a painting by Dame Laura Knight, Storm over our town, Malvern in a thunderstorm, reached a record price in a local auction.
It seems until then, Dame Laura's brilliance as a British painter and, in particular, the time she spent in Malvern, had largely been forgotten.
Apart from a painting in the Worcester Museum and Art Gallery, The Yellow Dress, there seems little to celebrate the artistic contribution she made to the county, to the celebration of our landscape and the recording of country crafts and craftsmen.
As part of Barry Jackson's theatrical coterie and the Malvern Festival, Dame Laura and her husband were regular visitors to the town from the 1930s, taking up residence here between 1940 and the 1950s, and producing a vast number of paintings, portraits, landscapes and sketches inspired by the local scenery.
If you think, like me, it is time we officially remembered her presence in Worcestershire and gave her the profile she is due, then perhaps you will join me in pressurising local authorities to create an appropriate commemoration.
Perhaps a blue plaque on the house in which she resided might be the start? Or an exhibition of her paintings about Worcestershire would trigger her long overdue revival? More tourists might be attracted to the area by highlighting Dame Laura's contributions alongside those of Elgar and Shaw?
If readers agree with me or have information on the whereabouts of her local work, I would be very pleased to hear from them.
HEATHER WHATLEY, Albion Road, Malvern.
© Copyright 2001-2010 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.ledburyreporter.co.uk