Portrait of Joan Elizabeth Woollard

Bernard Fleetwood-Walker was born in Birmingham where he studied at the School of Art and Crafts before a time in London and Paris. During the First World War he served in the Artists’ Riffles and was wounded and gassed. After the war he returned to Birmingham where he married Marjorie White (“Mickey”) and had two sons, Colin and Guy. In Birmingham he taught first at King Edward’s Grammar School and from 1929 became a respected and influential lecturer at Birmingham College of Art. He was a regular and frequent exhibitor at the Royal Academy and elsewhere from 1925 and gained a reputation for portraits, particular of women and children, and figurative painting. He finally moved to Chelsea so that he could devote more time to the students at the Royal Academy School where he was Assistant Keeper. A Memorial Exhibition was held at the Royal Society of British Artists in 1965. Painted c.1948, this watercolour relates to the artist’s oil on canvas Portrait of Joan Woollard, exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1949, no.265, and now in the collection of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists. Joan Elizabeth Woollard (1916-2008) was the first woman president of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists.