Watson Of The Wolds

Dr. Andrew Liddle talks to an artist who in later years returned to his roots to celebrate the beauty of an often overlooked area of the county


The Yorkshire Wolds is a rolling, very English landscape where pretty villages nestle in wooded hollows and ancient field boundaries are marked by hedgerows, flower-filled in summer and alive with butterflies and birds. It is one of England’s least known but least changed and most beguiling areas.

Perhaps more than any other artist, Peter Watson is intimate with the dry but lusciously green valleys, that gently cut a swathe through the undulating chalk ridges running down from Garrowby Hill and across from the Vale of York. He paints them in all their tranquil glory and diversity, captures their rounded contours to perfection.

But then he is a man of the Wolds, who grew up on the fringes of the busiest market town, Beverley, went to school in another, Pocklington. The dramatic coastline stretching from Bridlington to Holderness he’s walked times without number - as of course the Wolds Way which wends inland from the Humber and passes through Market Weighton and Fridaythorpe on its way to Filey.

Yet, if asked which artist is most synonymous with this area, many would suggest Bradford-born David Hockney who, not without fanfare, took an extended break from California to surprisingly paint an area so different from his native West Riding. It brought the region a wider recognition in the art world even if what he painted with a sensitivity far removed from his usual bold pop art style was not everyone’s precise idea of reality.

Peter’s father had been a farmer’s boy on the land his family lost in the Great Depression. Later he worked for the Ministry of Agriculture. “I always loved going with him on tours round the farms during the school holidays,” Peter remembers, explaining his early fascination with the fields and open spaces. “I used to go by train to school and marvel at the landscape as the fields were flying by. I was captivated by the way the colours changed with the seasons, sometimes from week to week.”

He smiles, half shrugs, at the suggestion that Hockney’s stated aim is always to “create a splash”, freeze a colourful moment in time. “I think I try to capture the eternal elements, the emptiness of the wide spaces, their remoteness.” He’s choosing his words carefully. “I don’t paint churches and pretty duck ponds but the patchwork of fields, their shapes and patterns, that sustain the region’s economy and define its character.”

It pleases him that so many of those that buy and commission these landscapes are local farmers and agricultural workers, who evidently detect the spirit of the immense undulating vistas they live and work in distilled in a single image. “They like what they see,” he laughs, “and give it their seal of approval.”

There are so many images, now available as prints, that take us across fields which are a tapestry of luscious greens in Spring, sometimes with a blueish tint that he puts down to fertilisers, vividly yellow with rape in summer, often dotted with haybales. But how is it that so many are criss-crossed with geometric patterns and have unwavering ‘tramlines’ disappearing into the distance where land meets sky. Others have rippling, swirling decorations that ebb and flow. “That’s easy,” he smiles, “it’s because they are ploughed by computer-driven machines!” He is happy to embrace the new technology to add interest to an otherwise featureless field.

If he has any regret, it might be that it took him several decades before he started to capture on canvas this area so dear to his heart. “I think I always knew this is what I wanted to paint,” he says, at last. “Although I went through many different artistic phases before you might say I returned to my roots.”

A gifted artist while still at school, Peter pursued a Foundation Course at Hull College of Art before studying Graphics at the Liverpool College of Art. It was the height of the Swinging Sixties when the country-boy found himself in one of England’s brightest cities riding the wave of Beatlemania and World Cup-winning football fever. “I found it a great experience, something completely different and it made me a more rounded person, alive to new surrounding and able to adapt to them.”

It was closely studying the graphic approach to art that sharpened his eye for bright colours, angular shapes and random patterns, made him aware of the visually arresting power of reflection and distortion. These influences are seen in later phases of his development. We detect an entirely different perspective, for example, in the oblique blocks of chiselled concrete that feature in the strangely eerie images of the Holderness sea defences which he jokingly likens to “surreal moonscapes”. And we can’t help being dazzled by the slantwise refraction of light through glass on water from the outside looking in upon Scarborough’s much missed Aqualand.

Peter’s first body of work, highly acclaimed at the time and now held in even higher regard, was a commissioned series of South Yorkshire coal pits, now forming a collection in the National Mining Museum in Wakefield. Vividly detailed, they poignantly document the closing in quick succession of 14 pits and the passing of an age and end of way of life.

Occasionally he will go back with his wife, Rita, originally from Wentworth, near Rotherham, who first took him to South Yorkshire. Neither of them recognises what they see. “The iconic cooling towers I painted were at Tinsley Viaduct. Those at Meadow Hall we now visit - as a shopping mall!” He’s looking back down the vista of more than fifty years but not at all nostalgically. As a keen golfer himself he rejoices to see the wide greens that have grassed over former slag heaps, and the modern housing estates that have sprung up where once were grimy pit villages.

These paintings completed while he was an art teacher at a school in Filey established his reputation, swelled his list of commissions and gave him hope that one day he would turn professional.

His next body of work reflects his great love of sport. He was captain of the first eleven at Pocklington Grammar, “a decent off-spinner who could bat a bit.” He grew up watching Hull City at one of the most exciting of times. “We had four great goal scorers, Houghton, Wagstaff, Chilton and Butler, in the same team.” He shakes his head almost in disbelief. When the Tigers were playing away he would cheer on either of the city’s great Rugby League teams.

Although his football and rugby league paintings have pride of place in club houses around the county, it is his large-scale study of a triumphal gathering around captain David Byas before the pavilion at the Scarborough Festival, which has gained him the most sporting fame. Done only three years before Yorkshire regained the country championship after a gap of 34 years, and seeming almost to anticipate the glorious achievement, it has become a sporting icon among the Yorkshire members, not least the 60 or so who recognise themselves on it.

It’s easy to spot such as Dickie Bird, standing behind the skipper and also Sir Tim Rice, a great lover of the game. The playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn couldn’t be there himself so he sent Charlie ‘Capability’ Brown - his cat!

When Peter’s not playing golf or squash or experimenting with new-fangled games called “Padel Tennis and Pickle Ball”, or looking for viewpoints to sketch in the Wolds, he’s likely to be founded at home in East Ayton, seated at the easel in his studio, painting in oils with fine sable brushes. He primes the canvas with a couple of coats of white, then sands it down to create a texture to sketch on with pencil. He builds up the colour in blocks. It can be a slow process, waiting for the paint to dry. Of his two dominant colours, umbers dry quickly, greens take much longer. “Getting started can be a bit tedious,” he confesses. “The stage I like best is adding the small delicate details, watching it all beginning to come alive.”

Perhaps he’s fulfilling a commission or painting a scene destined to hang in the Myton Gallery, in the Hepworth Arcade, Hull, and ultimately appear in print form. His work often appears in exhibitions and public places. A particularly attractive portrait of Scarborough’s South Bay hangs in one of the seafront’s most popular cafes giving customers a rare glimpse of rocks normally covered by the sands.

The landscapes that Peter is currently painting - far removed from Hockney’s in style and intention - take us on an intimate journey through the Wolds. “They are part of who I am,” he says, finally, “they are my identity.”

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