Lionel Bulmer

British 1919 – 1992

Lionel Bulmer studied at Croydon School of Art for two years before being conscripted in the army. After WWII in 1944 he enrolled at the Royal College of Art, which, at the time, had relocated to its wartime home in the Lake District. Whilst at the RCA Bulmer met a fellow student Margaret Green, their romance swiftly bloomed, and the pair became inseparable. Once the two returned to the RCA in Kensington Bulmer received tuition from the likes of Ruskin Spear, Carel Weight (Mist Rising) and Charles Mahoney.

Bulmer and Green were able to spend several months roaming in France as Green won many prizes including a Travelling Scholarship. During their time in London, Bulmer and Green rented room in Elm Park Gardens and then in a Lucan Place studio, this location was perfect for the two artists to find human and scenic subjects in nearby squares, parks and embankments for the paintings they would produce from almost adjoining easels back at home. To support their painting, they accepted part-time teaching posts in art schools In 1948, Bulmer obtained a teaching post at Kingston School of Art and continued teaching there until 1983 when he and his wife decided to give up their teaching posts to devote themselves full-time to painting. Both Bulmer and Green’s work from this time showed a ‘savouring of small things’. The couple took to touring the Sussex countryside and south coast at weekends, and eventually rented a spartan room above a boathouse overlooking the Arun estuary at Littlehampton. They found a permanent home in a dilapidated medieval hall-house in a Suffolk hamlet beside the river Rat. From the 1950s they restored the medieval house and its garden at Onehouse themselves. The couple adored the beach at Aldeburgh, but on discovering Southwold they both became hooked, resulting in many canvases suggesting that the two figures were fixtures on the beach and beside the harbour over every high summer between 1960 and 1990.

Bulmer exhibited at the summer exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art in 1947, Leicester Galleries from 1948 as well as the Trafford Gallery, New English Art Club, Royal Watercolour Society where he was an associate member. The Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green Studio Estate is represented by David Messum Fine Art.

Bulmer died in 1992, leaving Green was utterly bereft.