EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 21 © 2017 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

83 Photograph by kind permission of David Messum Fine Art Ltd affinity with them. After such an introduction, I became completely captivated by this artist’s work and needed to know more about her. From my later research, I was pleased to discover that here was a woman who showed a tough and determined approach to her studies of the working horse. Lucy Kemp-Welch’s delight was to paint, usually on vast canvases, in the open air and in all weathers. On one occasion this tiny woman (she was not more than 5ft.) daily stood up to her waist in the sea for three weeks in order to paint the canvas known as ‘The Incoming Tide’. Her first notable painting was the result of quick thinking energy and a passion for portraying working horses from life. One evening, when a young student in the preliminary class at her art school in Bushey, she had suddenly become aware of a band of gypsies on their way to a local fair, driving a herd of ponies. Immediately she ran out and began furiously sketching them. The finished painting, ‘The Gypsy Horse-Drovers’, a large canvas, 8ft by 4ft, became her first picture to be hung in London’s Royal Academy. Lucy Elizabeth Kemp-Welch was born in Bournemouth, Dorset, on June 20th 1869, to a solicitor