Chesil Beach, 1952

Elisabeth Vellacott studied at London’s Royal College of Art in the 1920s. She went on to develop what could be described as a visionary painting style.

From the late 1940s Vellacott made some thirty ink wash paintings, often of imagined or remembered scenes. Chesil Beach is one of the most accomplished. Preparatory studies show that the figures were actually sketched in Dieppe, France, and only later set on Chesil Beach, in Dorset, whose pebbles Vellacott greatly enjoyed.