Coventry Art and Artists

Hi Foxcote, The first mentioned by Luke, Albert Chanler, is an excellent one to start with, his Coventry illustrations look like nothing I have ever seen before. Also a chance to flip through and read all about them. A great read I think.

Hi Foxcote & Dreamtime, @Foxcote: yes you need to make the most of this nice weather, the forum will still be here when the weather changes @Dreamtime: just stumbled into that book looking for Albert Chanler, but as you say some amazing illustrations. Have realised since I did the list that I left someone out when I looked on the Famous Coventrians page of this website (although I don't think art was his primary income so he wouldn't show up as artist on the census) : Sydney John Bunney. He was also mentioned in previous posts on this forum by ChrisC early this year. Tried to find him in the 1911 census, eventually found him under Sydney John Burney living at 154 Albany Road, Earlsdon working as an accountant (for light engineering?).

Sorry, he is clearly shown as Sydney John Bunney in the 1911 census In 1901 he is a Commercial Clerk, living at 1 Spring Street with his parents - his father is shown as a Pork Butcher - shopkeeper

Think you may have misunderstood me (as I didn't explain properly); a transcription error meant that Sydney John Bunney was listed as Sydney John Burney on the ancestry.co.uk's digitalised version of the 1911 census and so I had problems finding him (I wasn't trying to rewrite history ). I could see where the ancestry.co.uk transcriber had gone wrong - the handwriting in those days was terrible.

Excellent research Luke, thank you and well done!

Regarding Sydney Bunney when he lived with his parents. Member Midland Red posted this: "........he is clearly shown as Sydney John Bunney in the 1911 census In 1901 he is a Commercial Clerk, living at 1 Spring Street with his parents - his father is shown as a Pork Butcher - shopkeeper " I wonder if 1 Spring Street was the shop. Perhaps they lived upstairs. The interior shown in my earlier post looks more like a workroom than living space. All bare stone floors.

Please see my recent posting reference Cooke's of Coventry. David Cooke was a long-standing friend of H.E. Cox. Cooke presented 70 water colour paintings of Old Coventry to Coventry City Council in the 1930's. They are exhibited in the Council House Lobby. I am sure if anyone wanted to view them then permission could be obtained from the Council.

This is another of his drawings from 1901. Not titled. Spring Street again?

I have a scrap book that my mum made in which she has copied some poetry and kept cuttings of anything that interested her. One of the cuttings is an article from the Telegraph dated May1999 about a painting a lady bought in a charity shop of Spon End by an artist who called himself Van Art whose real name was Arthur Keene who worked at the Riley Factory. On the back of the painting is scribbled "A famous landmark of old Coventry, Spon End Arches by Van Art of Coventry, painted in 1972 - this is a rough sketch for a large picture which is now in one of the buildings" There is no follow up to this article. Does anyone know any more about it ?

When it says that the large picture is in one of the buildings, I wonder if it means the antique shop which used to be at the far end of the row of buildings. It used to be run by the Hallidays.

In the picture "The Court behind Gosford Street" the artist depicts a rectangular object immediately beneath each ground floor window - any idea what these were?

Has anybody come across a Coventry artist I knew as "Jeannie Johnson" We lived at 17 Bassett Rd Coundon in the early 1970`s - she lived nearly directly opposite She and my wife were friends and Heather my wife helped her with hanging her front room curtains. "Jeannie" in return gathered a bunch of flowers from our garden and painted a beautiful true to life picture of them in a bowl on a table and presented it to us - we still have it to this day. She also painted a spray of apple blossom which my daughter has. I think I heard she was quite well known and was "Hung" in Leamington

Roger, the rectangular objects are most probably shutters for the windows. The Gosford Street court view is novel to me and as such very useful. If I can work out which one. I'll let you know if/when I work it out. My first wild stab in the dark is that it might be Muston's Yard on the south side two passages west of the Royal Oak. Checking a later map, it was court number 43, west of the Sir Colin Campbell. I'd be happy to be told otherwise.

I thought shutters, but I didn`t think the size or shape matched up. Artistic licence?

I think it's just wonky fittings. A lot of the earlier images (including photos) show shutters, though it wasn't much later that they were removed. Probably because things got safer. Some are the sort of shutter we'd recognise but a lot are like these lifting up and attaching at the top (safety feature if a burglar needs to climb to reach the lock?) I initially though it was the door to a coal bunker but there's no reason for them to be that big or placed under each window.