Vaurocque Cottages, Sark

Arthur Bradbury was born in Preston, then moved to Bournemouth with his family in 1901. Showing artistic promise, he went to London to study at the St John's Wood School of Art and then the Royal Academy Schools, later returning to Bournemouth. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1913 and by 1915 was living in Parkstone, Poole, near to where Augustus John was resident in Alderney. In World War I, Bradbury served in the Dorsetshire Regiment Special Reserves. Before the War, he had already started travelling to the small, car-free Channel Island of Sark, where he later bought a house and was able to record a traditional rural life that was fast disappearing in post-war England. 

Shortly before World War II, Bradbury moved to Sandbanks, Poole, at that time still a peninsula of dunes and only starting to be developed into what eventually became prime international real estate. For a time, Bradbury had served as a merchant marine and, loving sailing, he could from Sandbanks indulge his hobby and paint sailing ships in the harbour and traditional port of Poole. 

Never part of the mainstream of modern British art, supplementing his income as a popular teacher at Wimborne School, Bradbury's talents have perhaps gone rather under the radar, but his marines, rural scenes, nudes and portraits, in a range of media from etching and watercolour, to tempera and oil, form an extremely strong and collectable corpus of high quality work. In 1939, he was elected to the Royal West of England Academy.

This lovely small watercolour with gouache captures a rural way of life on Sark in strong colours, making it reminiscent of the work of the Newlyn School.