Reflections of people's lives

It is a fitting venue for the work of Arthur Kitching who was the curator of the Manor House from 1963 to 1974.

But the artist was not a native of Ilkley. He was born the son of a steelworker in Sheffield in 1912. He started drawing as a small boy during long spells in hospital to correct deformed feet. The hobby soon became a habit and then an obsession as he continued to sketch throughout the rest of his life.

At the age of 16 he began work as a clerk in a steelworks and it wasn't until the age of 23 that he got formal training in his true vocation. He spent one year at the Sheffield School of Art, but financial considerations meant he could not continue his studies.

In the 1950's Mr Kitching moved south, working for Essex County Council, making 'artists' impressions' and arranging travelling exhibitions.

He returned to Yorkshire in 1958. His father-in-law had been trying unsuccessfully to sell a dilapidated house in Ilkley and the couple decided to buy it for themselves, killing two birds with one stone.

Fortunately, he was able to find a job at the Leeds City planning department and moved into the house on the banks of the River Wharfe, which was large enough for him to establish his own studio.

Mr Kitching joined Ilkley Art Club where he was to meet many like minded artists and was able to paint at weekends.

A transfer to the surveyor's department at the Ilkley Urban District Council offices saw Mr Kitching helping out with exhibitions at the newly-opened Manor House and he became curator two years later.

His Widow, Joyce, who still lives in Ilkley, said: "He nurtured it through its infancy and, with a minuscule budget of £200 mounted 12 exhibitions with no help beyond his caretaker and unpaid family, scouring the Dales for talented painters, potters and sculptors.

"They arrived on the doorstep too, in undreamed of numbers, from all parts of Yorkshire and beyond."

Before Bradford took over the management of the Manor House in 1974, there were exhibitions by world famous sculptor Barbara Hepworth, Herbert Read, Michael Ayrton and Sydney Nolan.

Mrs Kitching said: "The Manor House was a rendezvous for artists of all disciplines, a veritable arts centre of excellence, where problems could be aired over a cup of coffee and the desperate assured of friendly encouragement - and often bed and breakfast."

For ten years Mr Kitching taught life drawing at Craven College and in 1974 became Keeper of Exhibitions for Bradford Council.

From 1961 to when he died in 1981, the painter exhibited his own work throughout the North of England and was greatly admired by art lovers.

One notable fan of the artist's work is David Fraser Jenkins, art historian and Keeper of the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery in London.

In 1991 he wrote: "Kitching painted with purity and intelligence. He was a painter of the everyday that he knew, yet was outstanding in his ability to find grand subjects in this everyday, and to take from modern European art sufficient licence only for his own purpose, and to keep his distance as if nobody's slave.

"His natural talent was for decorative colour, and he understood well the urban life and geography of Yorkshire. He never painted anything that was not true, and pursued much further than most the whole truth of his subject."

Surprisingly for such a talented artist, his first solo exhibition did not take place until he was 53 years old, but it prompted the art critic of the Guardian, W E Johnson, to compare his work favourably with the French master of colour, Matisse, whose influence is clear in some of the 53 paintings in the Manor House exhibition, which lasts from December 14 to February 16.

Because of his humble background the artist lacked extensive formal training and his talents were not realised until later in life. But in some respects, according to Mr Jenkins, this made his work unique.

He said: "The lifetime near isolation of Kitching was cruelly restricting for him but his unbroken self-improvement allowed him to keep a contact with a home landscape that a more urbane professionalism would have erased."

Mrs Kitching said about her late husband's work: "The thing that is immediately striking is his unwavering concentration on the human figure. He was committed to the simple pleasures of this life, and all his work reflects the affection he had for the things he chose to draw and paint - families enjoying the countryside, the beach, children playing with boats, dogs, skipping ropes, and his two passions, football and wrestling.

"His pictures owe nothing to the prevailing artistic fashion and display in their colour and luminosity a joie-de-vivre that runs against the grain of much modernist art."

The latest exhibition's curator, Jane Mitchell, said: "This exhibition is a tribute to Arthur Kitching. In it we show paintings and drawings from the 1930s to his very last works in 1981."

"The paintings revolve around the lives of people, whether walking down the street, enjoying sport or holidaying on the beach."

The curator also pays tribute to Mrs Kitching: "Kitching's greatest and most loyal supporters are his family and in particular his wife, Joyce. "This exhibition is a tribute to the part Arthur Kitching played in expanding our artistic vision."

Mrs Kitching is glad to see her late husband's work exhibited in the place for which he had so much passion.

She said: "It is with great pleasure and pride that we see some of Arthur's paintings - most for the first time - on the walls of the building he loved, and where, I'm sure, his gentle ghost still walks."