Marjorie Kate Heather (1905-1989)

Marjorie Heather was born and lived in Newbury, Berkshire. She came to art as a mature student, studying under Albert Rutherston at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford, (1945–48). She demonstrated great ability whilst a student, winning prizes for figure composition and still life painting before going on to the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting, (1948–50).

Her works often had a strong sense of outline which reflected her abilities as a draughtsman and her conviction that drawing should become as quick and fluid as writing to an artist. She became known as a painter of semi-caricature figure groups in oils and watercolour, working up paintings in her studio based on her numerous sketches taken in situ. She was also a socially and politically engaged artist, often providing social commentary of her times (the anti-nuclear movement and struggles for recognition of women in the art institutions) through her documentations of demonstrations, rallies, marches and scenes of collective work.

She enjoyed a successful career of approximately thirty years. Her works were selected at the Royal Watercolour Society, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and as part of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition in 1956, 1976 and 1981. She was a founder-member of Newbury Art Group (1947) and helped to set up the Bussock Mayne Group. She was elected as a member of the Reading Guild of Artists in 1964 and was part of a group of artist friends who exhibited together including Stanley and Gilbert Spencer and Ronald Ossory Dunlop (all three members of the New English Art Club). Following her death in 1989, a memorial show was held at Newbury District Museum in 1991. Her works are held in numerous collections. Several are part of the West Berkshire Museum’s art collection and Reading Museum also holds some of her works.