Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green (lots 23-45)

Introduction
Margaret Green and Lionel Bulmer were people and painters of singular convictions – but from their first meeting in 1944, until Lionel’s last breath 48 years later, their lives simply merged. Friends called them MargaretandLionel.
(Ian Collins)

Introduction
Bulmer and Green met in the Lake District towards the end of the War where the Royal College of Art was temporarily located, having transferred from London to Ambleside to escape the Blitz.

Bulmer, the son of an architect, had originally enrolled at Clapham School of Art, but his studies had been cut short by his conscription into the military at the outbreak of the War. After being de-mobbed he transferred to the Royal College of Art. Green, the daughter of a Teesside steel worker in West Hartlepool had been inspired to become an artist by Patrick Heron, who drew her portrait during a family holiday in Yorkshire. She studied first at Hartlepool College of Art before also enrolling at the RCA. From their first meeting the two painters became inseparable.

On the return of the RCA to Kensington, Bulmer and Green were taught by, among others, Ruskin Spear and Carel Weight. When Green received an RCA travel scholarship the couple embarked on a tour of discovery, painting their way through France and Ireland for the best part of a year. The French sun and deep greens of the Irish landscape left a permanent mark on both artists, whose works of the familiar and everyday are dappled with soft warm light and a vibrant freshness. Once back in England they settled in Chelsea. Bulmer took up a teaching position at Kingston School of Art while Green taught at Walthamstow School of Art and they both exhibited at the Royal Academy and New English Art Club.

Keen to escape the austerity and smog of post-war London, however, they moved to the countryside. Initially they lived above a boat house in Littlehampton on the Sussex coast, but later moved into Lodge Cottage a dilapidated medieval hall-house surrounded by rundown gardens on the banks of the River Rat in Shelland near Stowmarket, Suffolk, which they lovingly restored. From there they set out on their frequent painting expeditions to the seaside communities of Southwold, Aldeburgh and Walberswick.

Relatively untouched by heavy industry, the Suffolk coast had been popular since the 18^th century as a destination for healthy living as well as artists like Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942) who after his studies on the Continent in the 1880s was quick to introduce an Impressionist style of painting to England. Wilson Steer, together with Sargent and Clausen was a founder member of the New English Art Club in 1886. Bulmer and Green became regular contributors to the Club’s annual exhibitions.

Working side by side over many years, Bulmer and Green’s work became so close in style and technique that it was often difficult to tell their work apart. In Suffolk they combatted this by Bulmer consciously developing a more pointillist approach to his painting, reflecting the influence of Wilson Steer, the Neo-Impressionists and the work of Georges Seurat (1859-1891) in particular. His new-found style lent itself to the depiction of beach scenes and bathers, and his coastal views of summer on the Suffolk coast came to define his career. As the writer Ian Collins noted of Bulmer’s work: ‘the season appears to be one of permanent summer.’ Meanwhile, Green continued to paint in her signature enigmatic manner. An acute observer of her surroundings, and the incident to be found in everyday life, she captured the essence of Post-War Britain in her thoughtful landscapes and canny figurative compositions. But after Bulmer’s death Green was so heartbroken that she stopped painting for the rest of her life.


LIONEL BULMER (BRITISH 1919-1992)
STILL LIFE WITH LEMONS AND FRUIT WITH PATTERNED WALLPAPER
signed with initials and dated 55 lower left; oil on board; 24.5 x 43.5cm; 9 3/4 x 17in (unframed)