About Margaret Green

Born at West Hartlepool, co. Durham on 7 March 1925, the elder of two daughters of a stock-taker in a local steel plant who was also secretary of the local art club, her mother’s maiden name was Betts. She studied at West Hartlepool School of Art and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art 1944-1947, then at its wartime Lake District headquarters at Ambleside before returning to Kensington in 1945, with Gilbert Spencer as Professor of Painting and Charles Mahoney a notable teacher, and where she was a star pupil, winning Henriques and Travelling Scholarships, a Silver Medal and Painting Prize and where she met Lionel Victor Bulmer [q.v.]. Green’s £160 travelling scholarship from the Royal College enabled Green and Bulmer to spend much of an idyllic year wandering and painting in France after which they rented a room in Elm Park Gardens, Chelsea then a studio in Lucan Place. They both taught, she at Walthamstow Art School, eventually to be recruited to the Royal Academy Schools. At her Suffolk and London studios Green painted steadily, but it was not until 1972 that she had a solo show, at David Wolfers’ New Grafton Gallery. She and Bulmer had shared an exhibition at the Trafford Gallery in 1954. Otherwise, her characteristically reticent works, oil on board and often no more than a few inches square, made mixed show appearances at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition; Leicester Galleries’ Artists of Fame and Promise; Roland, Browse and Delbanco, South London Art Gallery; d’Offay Couper Gallery; William Ware and Charles Keyser Galleries, also in touring exhibitions and in the provinces. Green and Bulmer had lived at Onehouse, near Stowmarket for many years but she only married Lionel at Stowmarket in 1991 and in 2002 Messum’s put on an exhibition ‘From City to Sea – the painterly journey of Lionel Bulmer and Margaret Green.’ She died at Onehouse on 4 November 2003. On a holiday visit to North Yorkshire, Margaret Green’s portrait was painted by the artist Patrick Heron, who was staying in the adjacent cottage but they were never to meet again. Over the years, Green’s work was acquired by numerous private collectors and a string of notable public and corporate collections. These included the Chantrey Bequest, the Financial Times, Queens’ College Cambridge, the Ministries of Information and Public Building and Works, and galleries in Carlisle, Coventry, Leeds and Nottingham.

To read an obituary for Margaret Green from the Telegraph please click here:

To access a link to Messum’s Margaret Green webpage please click here:

To view works in our gallery by Margaret Green please click here:

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