Ann Payne

The school was small, well-resourced, and based in Campden Hill London. There were tutors like the illustrator E.H. Shepard who drew the original illustrations for Winnie the Pooh. During the 50s the school had an academic approach to drawing and painting. It was considered an alternative to Slade School of Fine Art and Royal Academy. It was absorbed into Central Saint Martins twenty years ago.

She developed her own artistic vocabulary after finishing formal art education. While there is no evidence of a single direct influence on her work at this time, Ann looked at the work of other artists of the era and slightly earlier. She enjoyed the languid landscapes of the late nineteenth century Swiss painter Félix Vallotton (the subject of a large exhibition at Museum of Modern Art and Royal Academy recently in 2019), and a collection of English painters who had founded the Euston Road Group, like Victor Pasmore.

Her early career as a portrait painter enabled her to continue her creative direction, while also working as a runway model for several of London’s couturiers. It sounds like a charmed life, but London after the war was irrevocably altered and slow to recover. Even during the 50s artistic activity was intermittent and unless championed by a benefactor or patron, largely unsupported financially. Ann’s portraiture from this time showed she was a competent painter and capable of coordinating a succession of commissions. Her subjects were carefully composed, and each canvas maintained a measured observational approach.

The 60s opened a narrow chink for woman artists into an art world dominated by male artists that simply had not been available to them. Ann married and moved to rural Norfolk, to Barton Broad to raise a family. She continued to paint. Life in Norfolk lead to a new set of artistic influences much closer to home like Norfolk based Alfred Cohen, Brüer Tidman and Gwyneth Johnstone. Key figures like the landscape painter Edward Seago where part of her social circle.