BULMER, Lionel

1919 - 1992

Lionel Victor Bulmer was born at Wandsworth, London on 12 June 1919, third and youngest child of Francis Holles Bulmer (1881-1968), an architect, and his wife Annie Cecilia née Shelley (c1877-11 December 1960), who married at Lambeth in 1905 and in 1911 were living at 15 Alderbrook Road, Wandsworth with a 4-year-old daughter Eileen. At the age of 17, Lionel entered Clapham School of Art for two years before being conscription into the army at the outbreak of the Second World War but continued his painting in his free time. On demobilisation, he returned to his artistic career being accepted as a student at the Royal College of Art, still then relocated at Ambleside in the Lake District. Among his classmates was Margaret Green and they soon became inseparable, working side by side on sketching trips and on paintings back in the college studio, although they did not marry until just before Lionel's death in 1991. The Royal College of Art returned to Exhibition Road, Kensington when his tuition continued under Ruskin Spear (1911-1990), Carel Weight (1908-1997) and Charles Mahoney (1903-1968). Lionel and Margaret set to work in Chelsea and through one of Margaret’s many student prizes, a £160 travelling scholarship, funded a year of frugal travel through France and Ireland. Lionel exhibited at the Royal Academy most years 1947-1992 and with the New English Art Club at Sunderland and elsewhere. To support their painting, the partners accepted part-time teaching posts in art schools, Lionel at Kingston College of Art, and Margaret, firstly at Walthamstow School of Art and then at the Royal Academy Schools. In the late 1950s, they purchased an unrestored old house in West Suffolk for £850 and began restoring a noble building dating from the Middle Ages, bulldozing the jungle to plant a paradise of flower, fruit, and vegetable beds, which took them towards self-sufficiency but neither ever tired of painting. They adored the beach at Aldeburgh, with the two lookout towers and the tram-like tracks for hauling fishing boats up and down the shingle. They then discovered Walberswick and Southwold with the resulting flood of canvases suggesting that the two figures were fixtures on the beach and beside the harbour over every high summer between 1960 and 1990. Lionel Victor Bulmer died at Lodge Cottage, Buxhall Vale, Stowmarket, Suffolk on 10 February 1992.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from 3 Elm Park Gardens, Southwest London
1947 547 Kirdford
         635 Elm Park Gardens: Winter
1948 573 The Pebbly Beach
         579 Cart under a Dutch Barn
         673 The Meadow
1950 9 Morning Papers
         546 Evening at Loxwood Fair
1951 111 'Look what I've found mummy'
1952 921 The Kitchen Garden - watercolour
         1008 Summer in the Suburbs - watercolour
from 3 Curran Studios, Lucan Place, London SW 3
1954 507 A Woodland Scene
1955 162 Meadow with Rushes and Blackthorn
         323 Collecting Caterpillars
1956 131 The Shelving Beach
         357 Still Life: Christmas Tree
1957 433 Summer
         679 The Bird Watcher
1958 76 The May Picnic
         112 Midummer's Eve 'Rock'
         642 The Midsummer Meadow
1959 189 October Landscape
         569 A Night in Town
1960 24 Rose, Still Life
         608 Red Landscape
         623 The Water Meadow
1961 436 Hedge Landscape
         517 The Dark Harbour
         530 Landscape with a Mackeral Sky
1962 102 Shelland
         245 The Red Room
         443 Still Life with Fruit and Coffee Pot
1963 90 Shelland Windows
         400 The Warren
         513 Breakfast, Still Life
1964 71 Shelland Church
         330 Shelland Garden
1965 55 Shelland
         103 The Red Window
         138 The Grey Wiindow
1966 74 All day at Shelland
         75 Red Landscape
         76 The Yellow Room
1967 1354 Two Rooms
         1367 Shelland Table
1968 93 Two Windows
         98 The Music Room
         99 Cottage Interior, Shelland
1969 95 Oriflamme
         457 Lamps and Stars
         708 Summer
1970 1004 Safranin
1971 246 Quatrefoil and Rose
1972 73 Across the River, Walberswick
         77 View on the River Blyth
         296 The Kite
1973 81 Windbreaks
         491 The Sunshade
         1060 The Blue Sea
1974 584 Southwold Harbour
1975 1032 Walberswick Ferry
         1254 Southwold Harbour: Morning
1976 693 Covehithe
         694 Sunset
1977 480 Tranquility, Sunset on the Blyth
         900 A Game in the Garden
         1343 Repose; The Hot Afternoon
1978 406 The Shadow
         1171 The River, Southwold
         1237 The Bridge, Southwold
1979 1068 Going down to the Sea
         1171 In the Dunes, Southwold
1980 1057 On the Overgrown Path
1981 588 The Garden
1982 1143 Painting in the Country
1984 1333 The Bridge
1985 155 Groynes
         658 Bathers
1986 1118 The Beach
         1222 Walberswick
1987 1050 Southwold Beach
         1310 Tomorrow, to Fresh Woods
1988 969 Coast Scene
1989 958 People on a Groyne
1992 1022 Southwold Beach II
         1028 Southwold Beach I

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Works by This Artist