Exciting exhibition at Bushey Museum

A renowned artist is being celebrated at Bushey as a collection of her paintings goes on display.

The Call by Lucy Kemp-Welch

The Lucy Kemp-Welch Memorial Collection is being shown after spending over 20 years in storage. Lucy Kemp-Welch (1869-1958) was the foremost painter of horses of her time, especially of working horses and her work constitutes a record of almost vanished breeds.

She is best known for her illustrations for Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, but this exhibition is of large canvasses with horses of all types, in action and at rest.

The works show wild ponies in Exmoor; the last horse-launched lifeboat being pulled into a boiling sea; huge heavy horses pulling felled timber or a circus caravan on the move; hard working farm horses trudging home at the end of the day, their coats glistening in the low evening sun. Not least there is a row of horses of all sizes, colours and disposition, from thoroughbreds to the lowliest carter's horse, standing tethered to a rope barrier, patiently, restlessly or with aristocratic air.

Lucy Kemp-Welch was the first President of the Society of Animal Painters, a not inconsiderable achievement for a woman at that time.  She ran a famed School of Animal Painting and her works are in many public collections in Britain, including Tate Britain and the Imperial War Museum; and in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. 

The exhibition - at Bushey Museum and Art Gallery - is mounted by kind permission of the Trustees of the Lucy Kemp-Welch Memorial Collection.

Bushey Museum, which is primarily funded by Hertsmere Borough Council, is in Rudolph Road off Bushey High Street, and is open Thursdays to Sundays from 11am to 4pm with free admission.

For further information please contact the administration officer at Bushey Museum on 020 8420 4057; email busmt@bushey.org.uk or visit www.busheymuseum.org