Local scenes painted by Hereford artist Brian Hatton finally identified (From Hereford Times)

Local scenes painted by Hereford artist Brian Hatton finally identified

7:00am Friday 29th January 2010 in

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BRUSHES with the past put Robin Thorndyke in the picture, framing a landscape that inspired one of Britain’s great lost talents.

Mr Thorndyke’s regular runs around Breinton and Warham revealed what the artist Brian Hatton saw in his surrounds.

Those pastoral scenes and rustic ruminations upon which Hatton made his name well over a century ago are little changed today.

Locals saw that for themselves at a special exhibition of Hatton’s work held at Hereford’s Friar Street Museum and Resource Centre this week.

That they could do so was down to Mr Thorndyke’s dogged detective work linking locations to illustrations.

The event brought descendents of Hatton and his subjects together for the first time.

Born in Broomy Hill, Brian Hatton had a talent to rank among Britain’s best had it not been lost to the First World War. That talent was honed through the scenes of everyday life Hatton found close to home.

Mr Thorndyke regularly runs through the area, but took to following Hatton’s footsteps as a volunteer with the Hatton online archive project – the launch of which featured in the Hereford Times recently.

Many of the details about Hatton’s early inspirations had been vaguely recorded at best, Mr Thorndyke’s weeks of work put more than 20 pictures – from fields to farmhouses – in their place.

Mr Thorndyke was travelling light, Hatton had to carry his easel, canvas, stool and paints in lead containers with him.

“So its no wonder he stayed near home,” Mr Thorndyke said.

But, as the exhibition showed, what Hatton found there proved timeless.

MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST, BRIAN HATTON

Brian Hatton’s promise with the pencil was evident in infancy, encouraged by his observant, artistic parents Alfred and Amelia.

By the age of 10 this winner of the Royal Drawing Society’s Gold Star was taking tea with its president, Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria.

Within two years Hatton was hosting an acclaimed exhibition in Paris and a decade on he had done enough to be hailed a genius with a place among the greats his for the taking.

The promise died with him on Easter Sunday, April 23, 1916. Second Lieutenant Brian Hatton of the 1st Worcestershire Yeomanry was last seen alive among the sandhills of Oghratina, Egypt, riding to fetch reinforcements for comrades overwhelmed by attacking Turkish troops. First posted as missing, confirmation of the 28-year-old’s death came a few months later. A body in the desert was identified as Hatton by a tiny photograph of his wife May - a dance teacher in Hereford - found in his wallet.

The loss was significant to a British art scene shaking off the last remnants of mid- Victorian complacency.

Hatton’s prolific output - inspired by everyday life in his home county, out of another era – had much to offer emerging movements with his deceptively simple, clear-sighted realism.

Sargent, Brangwyn, Orpen and Augustus John were all contemporaries to whom he was compared.

For many years Hereford had a gallery devoted to Hatton at the former Churchill House Museum on Aylestone Hill. That archive of more than 1,000 works and exhibits is now online, with the collection itself in safe storage.