West Riding Back Yards

A beautiful painting Denis , and you have painted it beautifully.

Superb painting

Always excellent Denis

A great subject beautifully painted with a lovely variety of brushstrokes in the stones and an excellent portrayal of the shapes of the buildings Denis.

I came across a book of photographs, all black and white, taken in the West Riding perhaps seventy years ago. Not typical chocolate box photos of pretty , rural, Dale’s landscapes. No - these are in the main, dull, cold, mean pictures which show how hard life could be in what were then grim, sooty mill towns. As a child I lived on the fringes of these towns with their cobbled streets, tall chimneys belching smoke, clogs, whippets and pigeon lofts and the book of photographs taken by Clifford Whone made me realise just how grim life would have been for my grandparents. Conditions improved. But I wanted to depict how things were and I copied this from one of Clifford Whone’s book illustrations. Don’t know where he took the photo. It could have been Keighley or Bradford. But that is how it was!