Margaret Green Walberswick

About the artist

MARGARET GREEN (1925-2003)

MARGARET GREEN was born in West Hartlepool, County Durham, the daughter of a stock-taker in a steel plant, who also ran the local art club. Her parents always encouraged her to paint. On holiday in a popular sketching area of Yorkshire, the 16-year-old Margaret was drawn by Patrick Heron, who happened to be staying next door. This encounter with a celebrated young painter confirmed her own artistic calling. From Hartlepool Art School, she won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art at its wartime home in the Lake District. There she fell in love with the painter Lionel Bulmer. It was during this period that the two students first visited Walberswick. They came in a spirit of homage to paint in the footsteps of the English impressionist Philip Wilson Steer, who had visited Southwold and Walberswick during the 1880s. Years later they moved to Suffolk after finding a dilapidated mediaeval hall house near Stowmarket. They restored the ruin themselves, adding a light-filled studio. From here they made frequent excursions to paint in Walberswick and Southwold, exhibiting in New English Art Club shows and the Royal Academy summer exhibition. When Lionel died in 1992, Margaret was bereft and never painted another picture until her own death eleven years later.

(The portrait of Margaret Green above is by Lionel Bulmer)