Margaret Green

British 1925-2003

Margaret Green was born in West Hartlepool, County Durham, the eldest daughter of a stock-taker in a steel plant, who was also a secretary of the local art club. From an early age, both parents encouraged Green to paint. Whilst on holiday in a popular sketching area of north Yorkshire, the 16-year-old Green was actually drawn by the young Patrick Heron, who by chance happened to be staying next-door. The encounter confirmed a second artistic calling.

From 1944 she studied at West Hartlepool School of Art and then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, which, at the time, had relocated to its wartime home in the Lake District. Green studied at the RCA until 1947, during which time she met a fellow student Lionel Bulmer, their romance swiftly bloomed, and the pair became inseparable.

During her time at the RCA, Green won many prizes including a Silver Medal, a Painting Prize and a £160 Travelling Scholarship, which allowed her and her partner Bulmer to spend several months roaming in France.

Graduating in 1947, Green started teaching at Walthamstow College of Art, then in the 1960s at the Royal Academy Schools. During their time in London, Green and Bulmer 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. Both Green and Bulmer’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.

Margaret adored painting views of the house and garden in winter. But on summer days the partners were likely to be found sketching side by side at Walberswick or Southwold. These were to be the images for which they were best known in New English Art Club shows, with whom Green was a member. In 1972, Green held a solo exhibition at the New Grafton Gallery and in 2002 Messum’s held a joint exhibition of her and her husband’s work. Green also exhibited with the London Group and at the Royal Academy. Her work is included in the UK Government Art Collection, the Hartlepool Art Gallery and the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.

When Bulmer died in 1992, Green was utterly bereft. She never produced another original picture, choosing to restore and re-visit earlier works. Margaret Green died in Saxstead, Suffolk in 2003.