Over the course of a long and very successful career spanning the first half of the 20th century, Lucy Kemp-Welch established herself as one of the leading equestrian painters at work in the UK and one of the country’s best-known women artists. David Boyd Haycock’s new, extensively illustrated biography of Kemp-Welch brings this remarkable artist and her work back into sharp focus. Born in 1869, Kemp-Welch first came to the art establishment’s attention in 1897 when her immense painting, Colt Hunting in the New Forest, caused a sensation at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition; the work was bought for the Nation by the Chantry Bequest in the year of exhibition. In 1915, she illustrated Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, and was commissioned to paint images for the Government during the First World War. Later, the mural Women’s Work in the Great War, was placed in the Royal Exchange in London, where it remains to this day.Respected art writer and curator Boyd-Haycock shines new light on Kemp-Welch’s life, writing from a 21st-century perspective and reflecting on her as a female painter in a male-dominated environment. Alongside Kemp-Welch’s paintings, the book will feature exclusive period photographs of the artist herself, shown at work and in her studio.
