(Click on thumbnails to see a larger images. Details of available paintings are at the foot of this page)

Joe started to paint shortly after he retired from teaching at the end of 1988 and went to live in Tenby.  The works illustrated range in size from a few square inches upwards, but very few are more than a couple of feet high or wide.  There isn’t space here for more individual descriptions, but he worked in paint or pastel on paper, board or canvas as the mood took him, teaching himself technique as he went along.  Many of the images, photographed, became his Christmas cards, as friends fondly remember. Unfortunately, apart from his cards, Joe rarely dated or titled his pictures, and the order of production, and many of the subjects are conjectural, but as he often worked from photographs – particularly from Polaroids which show evidence of elements of a project snapped for reference and combined in a picture – further identifications may yet be made.

Of all the images above which deserve further explanation, that of ‘Jemima Nicholas’ may be the most mystifying: she was a celebrated Pembrokeshire character, 1755-1832, a cobbler, credited with capturing several Frenchmen in 1797 when the countryside rose against Napoleon’s attempted invasion. Her legend lives online, as elsewhere, for the curious. – ‘Chopin and George Sand in Majorca’ was occasionally referred to as, ‘The Brownings,’ but the former is perhaps the more likely title. – The ‘Tenby Fire’ image commemorates a terrifying night there early in the last decade when the defunct hotel on the corner of The Norton burned down – and very nearly took the rest of the terrace with it.

Many of Joe’s paintings are available at modest prices as contributions to further remembering him at Stowe.  If you would like one or more, please contact Chris Atkinson via the Old Stoic Office: oldstoic@stowe.co.uk.  Sizes and media vary.  Some of the works are framed, some small works on paper.  If you would like more information before contacting Chris, please use the contact link on this site.  Of the images here, the following are currently available: 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 22, 25, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 49.  I hope to add a page of further pictures, including some self-portraits, shortly. PY