Jean was born in London, and moved to Leigh-on-Sea with her parents in the early 1920s. Her senior school was St Hilda’s in Westcliff-on-Sea, where she focused on drawing and painting, receiving awards for her work from the Royal Drawing Society. In the 1950s and ’60s she attended painting classes at Southend Technical College. Around the same time, she joined the ‘Wednesday Group of Artists’, which regularly met, worked and exhibited in Old Leigh. Members painted the Old Town’s busy waterside scene of cockle boats and cockle sheds, yachting and London day-trippers. The Thames Estuary’s skies and tides provided an ever-changing visual backdrop.

Jean also painted coastal scenes around East Anglia, country landscapes, and flower arrangements. In contrast with these, she was drawn to the activity and dynamism of people at work, and painted some large-scale urban scenes involving construction and demolition (Jean never went far without her sketchbook). Three of her paintings of Southend-on-Sea’s re-development in the 1960s are now part of the city’s municipal art collection at the Beecroft Gallery, viewable at ArtUK.

Jean was a member of Southend Art Club, and a frequent exhibiter at galleries in Essex and London.

In Charles Hemming’s book “British Painters of the Coast and Sea” (Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1988), Jean is mentioned amongst other Leigh-on-Sea painters of the post-war years.

Our thanks go to all those who have kindly sent photographs of the pictures they own, helping us create this record of Jean’s work.