GREEN, Margaret

1925 - 2003

Margaret Green was born at West Hartlepool, co. Durham on 7 March 1925, the elder of the two daughters of a stock-taker in a local steel plant who was also secretary of the local art club, her mother's maiden name was Betts. Margaret studied at West Hartlepool School of Art and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art 1944-1947, then at its wartime Lake District headquarters at Ambleside before returning to Kensington in 1945, with Gilbert Spencer (1892-1979) as Professor of Painting with Charles Mahoney (1903-1968) a notable teacher, and where Margaret was a star pupil, winning Henriques and Travelling Scholarships, a Silver Medal and Painting Prize and where she met Lionel Victor Bulmer. Green's £160 travelling scholarship from the Royal College of Art enabled Green and Bulmer to spend much of an idyllic year wandering and painting in France, after which they rented a room in Elm Park Gardens, Chelsea and then a studio in Lucan Place. Both Margaret and Bulmer were teachers, Margaret at Walthamstow School of Art, eventually to be recruited to the Royal Academy Schools. At her Suffolk and London studios, Green painted steadily but it was not until 1972 that she had a solo show, at the New Grafton Gallery although she and Bulmer had shared an exhibition at the Trafford Gallery in 1954. Otherwise, her characteristically reticent works, oil on board and often no more than a few inches square, made mixed show appearances at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition; Leicester Galleries; Roland Browse & Delbanco; South London Art Gallery; d'Offay Couper Gallery also in touring exhibitions and in the provinces. Green and Bulmer had lived at Onehouse, near Stowmarket for many years but she only married Lionel at Stowmarket in 1991. In 2002 Messum Fine Art put on an exhibition 'From City to Sea - the painterly journey of Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green.' On a holiday visit to North Yorkshire, Margaret Green's portrait was painted by the artist Patrick Heron (1920-1999), who was staying in the adjacent cottage, but they were never to meet again. Margaret Bulmer died at Onehouse, Stowmarket, Suffolk on 4 November 2003. Over the years, Green's work has been acquired by numerous private collectors and a string of notable public and corporate collections. These included the Chantrey Bequest, the Financial Times, Queens' College, Cambridge, the Ministries of Information and Public Building and Works, and galleries in Carlisle, Coventry, Leeds and Nottingham.

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Works by This Artist