The first London exhibition of the work of Staithes artist Lilian Colbourn since her death in 1967 opens tomorrow. Sarah Foster reports on a forgotten talent.

AN austere looking middle-aged woman stands painting on a cliff top, her easel buffeted by the wind and her cheeks rosy from the elements.

Her gaze takes in the rough sea and unforgiving landscape, with its craggy cliffs and ominous grey sky. She narrows her eyes against the sting of the salt-sharpened air and inhales deeply, absorbing the very essence of her surroundings and feeling the stir of a connection.

This was how Lilian Colbourn typically worked - in isolation, either outdoors or in her studio, studying the shapes and contours of the landscape but also trying to tap into its energy, to somehow make sense of it and how it related to her. In her Personal Notes, now owned by her artist daughter Gloria Wilson, she describes this as a struggle, saying of her paintings: "the marks of the battle must be there".

Born the daughter of a Primitive Methodist minister in Epworth, Lincolnshire, in 1897, Colbourn's early life was dominated by religion. She first visited the Yorkshire fishing village of Staithes on a sketching holiday in the 1920s and fell in love with its rugged wildness, which must have struck her as alien and exciting. With a failed marriage behind her, she had by then embarked on a course Bury Art School as a mature student, where she developed the philosophy: "Art is thought, energy, sincerity, above all, life itself."

In 1942, having remarried and had two daughters, her passion for Staithes drew her to set up home there "to live cheaply and save my artistic soul". While in the close-knit community renowned for its mistrust of strangers, the eccentric artist stuck out like a sore thumb, but she was accepted, the locals calling her work: "this 'ere wild sort of painting".

Although at the time, Colbourn was the only artist working in Staithes, the village had once been home to the Staithes Group, described as typifying the best in British Impressionist painting of the era. Arriving in the late 19th century, the group included painters who had been trained in France and Holland and brought the values, pure colours and broken marks of continental Impressionism.

Colbourn, meanwhile, developed from painting watercolours to emotionally charged compositions in oils, using sketches to guide her and working fast with both ends of the brush and her hands.

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, she achieved critical acclaim, with her work being exhibited in London alongside that of famous names like LS Lowry, Frances Hodgkins, Anne Redpath and Christopher Wood. But she suffered from the lack of an individual or gallery to promote her, and disappeared into obscurity.

It is hoped that the latest exhibition at Messum's, a gallery renowned for unearthing hidden talent, will help restore her reputation. Gallery owner David Messum says: "She's been forgotten and that's the exciting thing. What people have to do is come to terms with the fact that she's not, as yet, a hugely well known name but she was in her day. I think she's a huge talent."

* The exhibition runs at Messum's, 8 Cork Street, London, from tomorrow until March 27. All paintings are for sale and the gallery opens from 10am to 6pm on weekdays and 10am to 4pm on Saturdays.

Published: 09/03/2004