Our First Silent Auction 🎉🥳
Get ready for a unique art experience! Thanks to a generous donation from a resident who wish to remain anonymous, we're thrilled to host a silent auction featuring five exquisite paintings capturing the picturesque charm of Bourton on the Hill. These stunning artworks, each a masterpiece in its own right, invite you to explore the beauty of our village through the eyes of talented artists. Your bid could bring home not just a painting but a piece of our village's history. Join us for a fun morning of silent bidding and scrumptious breakfast 🥐 in support of a worthy cause. All profits will go towards the maintenance of the Old School. Reserve your seat for a morning of meaningful contributions and fun. We can't wait to see you there! ☕
DETAILS ON HOW TO PLACE YOUR BID WILL BE PUBLISHED SHORTLY.
About the paintings
Painting 1 - A framed oil on board of Bourton-on-the-Hill by Roy Kraty OBE (1909-2002)
Roy Alexander Kraty, painter and civil servant was born in Bournemouth, Hamphshire 2nd August 1909; OBE 1968, married 1934 to Dorothy Crouch, died in Harrogate 25th December 2002. Roy Kraty began painting in his late fifties, never considered himself more than “a modest and enthusiastic amateur”, but soon turned himself into a sound, enterprising and commercially successful landscape artist.
He was born in 1909 in Bournemouth, to a working-class family. His grand-father, Karl Kratz, had emigrated to England from Germany in the 1850s. His son, and Roy’s father, Charles, a motor engineer, changed the family name to Kraty when applying to join the British Expeditionary Force early in the First World War. Roy Kraty left school unqualified in 1926. He was good at rawing, had practiced emulating the cartoons of Tom Webster in the Daily Mail and aspired to be an artist. However, this was the time of the General Strike and the beginning of the depression.
Visits to the Labour Exchange resulted in Katy’s being appointed as book-keeper of the St Albans Brick Company at £1 a week. In his spare time, he tried to launch his own inventions, such as an electric paint scrapper and new trouser braces for men. By the late 1930s, he had progressed in the brick company. A raised salary enabled him to buy a car, marry his childhood sweetheart, build a house and start a family.
His fortune were transformed by the Second World War. he rose to squadron leader in Royal Air Force Intelligence, travelled extensively and in 1944 was mentioned in Despatches. On the formation of Winston Churchill’s new Ministry of Defence, he became a founder member of the Joint Intelligence Bureau. the aim of the bureau was to see that “our intelligence at the outbreak of any future war wouldn’t be in the appalling condition in which the country found it at the outbreak of the last war”.
Kraty rosę to be Assistant Director of Intelligence (Logistics), responsible for offensive and defensive missile sites, intelligence on airfields, transport, terrain, ports and waterways. The Cold War overhung his time with the bureau. Thebuild-up of the Soviet missile threat in the 1960s provided him and his small staff with “the most exciting and rewarding years of my service”. His service also encompassed the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift, the Suez crisis of 1956 and the 1962 Cuban missile confrontation. Kraty “enjoyed every moment of my daily working life”, he said, travelling extensively and meeting leading military and government figures. He retired in 1973.
Katy’s artistic career burgeoned from the mid-1960s. He spent lunch hours in the National Gallery examining single elements in pictures by the Old Masters and how they were painted. In 1966, he wandered into Reeves Art materials, made purchases and began painting with acrylics and then oils. He was encouraged to join the Stanmore Art Society and soon sold his first painting, for eight guineas.
One of Katy’s pictures was chosen for the Ministry of Defence Christmas card in 1971, winning him national press coverage, and he began getting commissions. With retirement and a move to Warwickshire in 1973, his new career flourished. no potential outlet was overlooked. He showed at the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry, Leamington Spa Art Gallery, London Guildhall, with the Country Landowners’ Association, in village shows, hotels and building societies.
A move to Wetherby, Yorkshire, in 1985, presented new subjects. With “a mountain of work accumulating on our walls or in our loft, I sought new outlets”, he recalled in 1996, in a privately published memoir”Some Batting and Bowling Experiences (With Bias) of a Self-Taught )Post-Retirement) Painter”. Within 25 years of retirement, Kraty had sold some 1,400 pictures to buyers in Britain and extensively abroad. (From The Independent).
Painting 2 - A framed watercolour of the view of the Main Street in Bourton on the Hill” by Alfred Grenfell Haigh (1870-1963). Signed & dated 26th June 1935.
Alfred Haigh is a painter in oil and watercolour, born in Parkgate, Cheshire. he studied art in Paris, then started to paint professionally at the age of 30. Haigh was a keen horseman and favoured hunting and racing subjects. he did not exhibit but had a number of patrons, including HRH The Aga Khan, the Duke of Portland and Lord Rosebery. He also made several painting trips to America. The Duke of Northumberland has Haigh’s portrait of the ninth Duke, painted in 1933. He was included in the British Sporting Art Trust’s 1983 show at Alpine Gallery (Source: Art UK).
Alfred Grenfell Haigh was born at Wavertree, Liverpool, Lancashire on 28 February 1870, son of Reginald Haigh, a cotton broker and his wife Flora Grenfell, fourth daughter of Admiral John Pascoe Grenfell, who married at the Parish Church Childwell West Derby in 1863. In 1871, Alfred was living at Trap Hill, Formby, Lancashire with his parents, 3 siblings and 7 indoor servants. Alfred was educated at Ellery [boarding] School, in Cheshire and at Russell Art School near Blackpool, where he won prizes for drawing, and later also studied art in Paris. He later married at Banbury Parish Church, Oxforshire on 18 October 1904 39- year old Annie Beatrice Kelk, daughter of John William Kelk. By 1911, they were living at The Cottage, South Cerney, Cirencester with a five years old son, Daniel Grenfell. In December 1922, Alfred exhibited with the Cheltenham Group of Artists at the Municipal Art Gallery, Cheltenham and with the Duke of Beaufort being Alfred’s patron, led to commissions from the Cotswold racing and hunting fraternity. Amongst the racehorses that he painted were portraits of “The Petrarch”, “Diomedes”, “Airborne”, “April With” and “Ocean Swell”. Actor Tom Walls was the owner of “April With” , the 1932 Derby winner, for whom Haigh also painted several hunter portraits. In 1939, Haigh was an artist living at Cleevestones, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire with his wife and when he exhibited at the Banbury and District Art Society in 1954. The most expensive painting was his “Jersey Aristocrats”. Alfred Haigh died in Banbury on 12 October 1963, aged 93. (Source: Suffolk Artists)
Painting 3 - A framed watercolour of “Bourton-on-the-Hill” by Lawrence Young. Signed & dated 1889.
A good Victorian watercolour “Bourton on the Hill” by Lawrence Young, 1889. The view if from the Horse and Groom at the top of the village looking down the hill. Signed and dated lower left. The painting has good colour and is in its original mount and frame. Image is 7” x 10 3/4”.
Painting 4 - A framed oil on board of “Bourton-on-the-Hill” by James Pride, RBSA, PPRBSA, FRSA ( 1916-1980). James Pride was born at Handsworth, Birmingham in 1916. He studied at Moseley School of Arts and Crafts, and at Birmingham College of Art between 1931-1935. Prides exhibited widely at the Royal Scottish Academy, Royal Society of British Artists, Royal Cambrian Academy, Royal West of England Academy, Society of graphic Art, in the provinces and at the Paris Salon where he received a silver medal in 1949. He was elected as president to the Birmingham WatercolourSocity in 1959 and a member to the Royal Birmingham Society Artists in 1960, becoming the Society’s Hon Secretary in 1966. Prides lived and worked in Harbone, Birmingham with his wife Peggy. Between 1974-1978, Prides was elected as the president of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.
Prides had several styles, all unmistakably his own. He produced hundreds of black and white line illustrations for books and pamphlets such as the 1973 publication Heart of England, a guide to the Middlands region which he illustrated throughout, with accompanying text by Louise Wright. Towns, villages, rural scenes and some fine Black Country landscapes filled its pages, while a watercolour, very different style but equally beautiful, graced the dust jacket. (Source: Wikipedia)