Exquisite bird studies by overlooked Leeds artist set to go under the hammer at Yorkshire auction

                                            

The pre-sale estimate for this set of four meticulous studies of a brambling is £300 - £500 

ONE of the most overlooked bird artists of the 20th Century is surely Raymond Booth who lived a largely reclusive life (1929 - 2015) in and around Leeds.

He has an international reputation as a painter of botanical subjects but his delightful studies of birds are far less well known - even in ornithological circles.

But his profile is sure to be raised when some of his 90  works - remarkable for what one commentator described as their "intensity and strangeness" - go under the hammer auction next month.

It is being staged by Tennants of Leyburn in Yorkshire at 9.30am on  October 7  https://auctions.tennants.co.uk/

Born in  in North-east Leeds, Booth spent much of his time  in Roundhay Park, believed to be  the second largest urban park in Europe, comprising more than 700 acres of parkland, lakes and woodland.

He had no desire to follow in the footsteps of his father by becoming a policeman.  

In 1946, aged 17,  he won a scholarship to Leeds College of Art but his studies were interrupted by the mandatory  requirement, at that time, to do two years of National Service. 

He spent most of that time helping to guard the Suez Canal with the  RAF in Egypt.

                                             

The artist - a deeply private man

It was probably while there that he contracted TB which was not diagnosed until much later after he had graduated from art college. Subsequently,  he was treated as a long-time patient at a sanatorium where he had plenty of time to develop his artistic  skills.

After his recovery, he expanded his portfolio of paintings which enjoyed sufficient sales to support a career largely spent in the studio though it was not until 1975 that he was given the opportunity by the Fine Art Society to have his own one-man exhibition.

An immensely shy man, he rarely visited galleries where his work was being exhibited and, indeed, seldom ventured far beyond Leeds.

His biggest supporter was his wife, Jean, whom he married in 1991, the couple having met in the artists' materials shop in Leeds where she worked.

But, as with his parents, she was reportedly never allowed in his studio - a place he regarded as sacrosanct.

                                            

Woodcock - pre-sale estimate £150 - £250

Swift - pre-sale estimate £400 - £600

Cuckoo - pre-sale estimate £500 - £800

Evening landscape in May - pre-sale estimate £1200 - £1800