Colin Neville writes about the celebrated Silsden artist Joseph West.

When Joseph West died in 1958, the Leeds landscape artist Owen Bowen wrote an obituary in honour of his fellow artist.

He wrote: "Mr West was of a most retiring disposition. He never sought publicity and relied solely on the quality of his work for the sale of his pictures. To the average individual, he was regarded as very reserved.

Only those, like myself, who entered into a close personal relationship with him could estimate the integrity and sterling worth of his character.

In my opinion he was one of the finest water-colour painters in the country, and in the North of England was considered the greatest of them all."

Joseph West was born at Farnhill in 1881, the son of a labourer, but lived for most of his adult life at Tufton Street North (later Green Avenue), Silsden, with his wife, Sally.

He trained as a house-painter and decorator - one of the few practical choices then for boys from a working-class background with a talent for art. He later formed a business partnership with another local man, working from premises at Kirkgate, Silsden.

But he was drawn to fine art and his first part-time formal lessons in drawing were at Glusburn School of Art.

He also studied painting via The Frank Spenlove School of Landscape Painting, Beckenham, Kent, probably via a correspondence course. This was to be a significant move in the development of his early painting style.

Spenlove encouraged all his students to, not just make a copy of the landscape, but to respond to it intuitively and paint how they felt about the scene in front of them.

Spenlove also encouraged them to paint to sell, and to paint what people wanted to buy to display on their walls. In most cases, these were scenes they had enjoyed visiting and held positive memories for them.

Thomas took this advice seriously, and in 1910, he broke away from his decorating business and opened a studio in Cavendish Street, Keighley, and later one in Greengate, Silsden, where he painted and gave private art tuition to local people.

He did this well into the 1950s and there are still Silsden residents who remember the tuition they received and how West, quietly and methodically, taught them to master the art of drawing in detail with a pencil before they attempted to paint.

Joseph’s paintings of Yorkshire land and coastal scenes, as well as scenes from his travels to East Anglia, became popular and his career as a professional artist advanced rapidly as his work began to sell in Britain and overseas.

He may have been ‘of a retiring disposition’, but he was also a shrewd businessman and knew that the way to sell his work was to get his name out there by exhibiting his paintings as widely as possible.

From 1910 onward, he had an annual solo exhibition of his paintings at Riby’s Art Gallery, Lawkholme Crescent, Keighley. He also exhibited work across the Yorkshire region, as well as further afield. In 1927 alone, he had paintings accepted for art shows across England, including at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Cartwright Hall, Bradford, as well as in Great Yarmouth, Hull, and elsewhere.

He was also a Member of the Fylingdales Group of Artists, as his frequent trips to Whitby to paint was considered sufficient to make him eligible for membership, normally only reserved for artists resident in that area.

In the 1930s Bolton Council commissioned 80 paintings from him for their galleries and museums and he was also commissioned to paint a diorama 23 foot in length of Morecambe Bay for the Bolton Civic Centre. Other dioramas were commissioned by the Tolson Memorial Museum in Huddersfield, and for the first Keighley Museum, forming backdrops for museum exhibits.

West’s work is also a useful source of local history, as he painted local buildings or scenes now vanished. A painting he painted in 1913 of Marley Manor, Keighley, demolished in the 1930s, is now held at Keighley Library, and Bradford Museums and Galleries have in their collections a Joseph West painting of a local forge once part of the now defunct nail-making industry in Silsden. A scene of Raikes Road (now Bradley Road) Silsden, in 1919, shows a rural, rutted road, very different from the same scene today. (see attached)

Joseph also had an interest in local geology and prehistoric history and painted scenes of an imaginary local landscape in the Neolithic Age, complete with animals, either extinct or now associated with hotter countries.

Bradford Museums and Galleries list 19 watercolours by Joseph West in their collection and there are a number of his paintings currently on display at Cliffe Castle. His work can also still be found on the walls of many local people.

His talent was recognised by his peers and he was made an Honorary Member of the British Society of Artists and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art, and a Member of the British Water Colour Society.

A moorland landscape painted by Joseph West. Picture copyright Colin Neville.

Joseph West's painting of Raikes Road (now Bradley Road). Copyright David Clarkson of Keighley.

Joseph West's painting of Bingley Church. Copyright David Clarkson