Leonard Squirrell’s artistic time machine revisits Suffolk

His superb draughtsmanship means that his works give us a wonderful window onto the past. His pictures function not only as art but also as a valuable source of social history.

Leonard Squirrell was born in Spring Road, Ipswich, but lived and worked for the vast majority of his life at Witnesham. Today blue plaques mark both his homes and this very modest artist is now highly collectable.

He is also the subject of a new book by his friend and former Woodbridge gallery owner Josephine Walpole.

Josephine didn’t live to see the publication of her labour of love but had just finished correcting the final proofs before she died.

Leonard Squirrell’s daughter Annette Kenny collaborated with Walpole on the book, helping to track down the wide variety of images used in the large-format publication.

Speaking from her Staffordshire home, Annette said the new book means that they have been able to bring together, for the first time, a large number of her father’s works and demonstrate the range and variety of his output.

The book also includes a number of sketches and working drawings which illustrate his working methods.

Annette explained that Josephine had written several books about Leonard Squirrell shortly after his death but wanted to make use of modern printing methods to produce a picture-led book that celebrated the breadth of his art.

“Josephine Walpole had wanted to do a new book for some time. She really wasn’t well but was absolutely determined to do it. The books she did just after Dad died were fine, but both of us were thinking how nice it would be to have a large format book and really show off the pictures to their best advantage.”

The new book is subdivided into sections which look at the various media in which he worked – drawing, etching, oils and watercolours.

She added that with the passing of the years, her father’s reputation as an artist has increased – he is frequently described as The Last of the Norwich School – and is now very collectable. This has resulted in more works coming to light, which has allowed them to track down an increasing variety of subjects from his 60 year career.

“The pictures keep turning up for auction in all sorts of weird places and I see them and say: ‘Oh, I wish we still had that,’

“It’s amazing the quantity of work that he managed to produce. His working life covered a good 60 years. He was still painting until a couple of years before he died in ’79.”

Leonard Squirrell grew up living in the house in Spring Road with his elder brother, Sydney. His mother had died of tuberculosis at the early age of 38 before Leonard’s tenth birthday.

His talent for art was spotted by George Rushton, the head of the Ipswich Art School, and he started studying there in 1908.

Annette said that there was never any doubt that Leonard would become an artist.

“He never had another job. He never dallied with the idea of being anything other than an artist. George Rushton approached my grandfather to say: ‘Look this lad’s exceptional. I want him to come to my school. Afterwards he can be a draughtsman at Ransomes or wherever but let him come to Ipswich Art School first.’

“Grandfather obviously appreciated the approach and allowed my Dad to go to the school and that was in his early teens. He then never looked back. Art was his life. He only slowed down after my mother died. He lived alone for the last seven years of his life but even then I think some of those later watercolours are some of his best work.”

Annette said that growing up, she just accepted that her father didn’t go to an office or a factory like other Dads. He stayed at home and painted. “When I was a child there was a studio built on to the back of the house with a huge north window. He got up, had breakfast, I went off to school and he went to work in the studio.”

Squirrell’s great hero was Norfolk artist John Sell Cotman. Annette said her father always admired the draughtsmanship of the Norwich school and became a really good draughtsman himself.

“Just look at his etchings. Etching is such an exacting, such a demanding skill, to be able to get those subtleties of tone. Aqua-tints are very tricky things to get right.”

She described her father as a very organised person – a quiet, reserved man, fairly self effacing but dedicated to his art.

He worked fairly quickly, making sketches on location before returning to his studio to work up a considered painting.

“He made sketches on site with a lot of colour notes dotted around the picture. He was even able to recall these several years later. Depending on the subject, he would spend anything from half an hour to a couple of hours drawing and making notes on the spot. Then, it was back to the studio and he would enlarge the work, redraw it to the size he wanted and the painting would follow.

“Once he had started on a painting he would tend to work on it until he had finished it. He didn’t chop and change as some artists do, moving from picture to picture, doing a bit here and there. He would tend to focus on one picture at a time. He was very organised and single-minded. Once he started something he would concentrate on that and finish it.

“When you look at his drawings, you get a sense of the speed at which he worked. He said: ‘Yes let’s have some looseness but let’s have some decent drawing and draughtsmanship as well.’

She said that she thought her father’s modesty meant that he didn’t promote himself as he should have done.

“I always thought that he never priced himself properly. He really undervalued his work. Financially life must have been a struggle at times. He lived through two world wars, he educated two children at private school, so therefore Dad had to do some commercial stuff to make ends meet. His cathedral paintings were commissioned but he didn’t dash them off, they were damned hard work.

“Also he did wonderful railway posters which were full of lovely images, full of lovely tones and shapes. He did a lot of railway carriage prints, those long thin pictures that used to be in the old fashioned carriages.”

Annette said although she is incredibly proud of her father and his work, while she was growing up she didn’t regard it as anything special. I suppose I just thought that that was the way that art was. That’s the way it should be.

“Going to school was slightly odd. You have those conversations, as all school children do: ‘Well, what does your Dad do? ‘Oh my Dad draws,’ – that was slightly odd.”

She said that Leonard Squirrell first met Josephine Walpole when she ran her gallery on Market Hill in Woodbridge. He used to visit her for materials, she would stage exhibitions and he used to get his framing done through her.

“Apparently, it was on one of those visits that she first suggested doing a biography and Dad being Dad said: “Are you sure anyone wants to read about me?” She managed to persuade him over a number of years but then he died before she could start work. She then approached me and I was happy for her to tell my father’s story.”

She said that she’s thrilled that in this latest volume that her father’s pictures get to do the talking.

“It’s lovely to have so many of his works collected together in this way. We have had so many appreciative comments. It’s so sad that Josephine Walpole is not here to see it published. She was quite a frail old lady before she started but at least she had seen the proofed pages. She was working on the final proofs when she died. It’s a wonderful legacy to both my father and her tireless work.”

She added she believes that the reason that her father’s work continues to be so sought after is the freshness of his execution and the fact that he captures a world which remains friendly and inviting.

“The work remains so fresh. They have a bright vibrant quality about them. The work is a window onto the past. You get a real sense of what Suffolk was like between the 20s and the 70s.

“I am particularly fond of his trees. His trees and his skies are absolutely wonderful. I love the fact he gets so much movement in there. You can almost see them moving in the breeze.”

Leonard Squirrell was very rooted in Suffolk. Although he travelled across Europe, painting and drawing, the vast majority of his work was inspired by scenes to be found on his doorstep.

Local companies used his work including Ransomes Sims and Jefferies and Fisons. For 20 years he produced watercolour drawings for William Brown (Ipswich) to illustrate their company calendars and did similar jobs for Pauls and Ladbrokes.

Even at the age of 84 he produced a painting for Compair Industrial for their calendar and a series of limited edition prints.

Josephine Walpole’s book, Artist of East Anglia – Leonard Squirrell 1893-1979, is published by Antique Collector’s Club, priced at �25.