On the Beach

This work bursts with a light and muted colour palette, relying predominantly on blues to depict the crashing waves along the beach and the calm sky above. The unusually shaped composition is home to three female figures - one relaxes on the beach and gazes towards the sea, another walks towards her seated friend whilst focusing on the crashing waves. The third and final figure, sporting an eye-catching red slip under otherwise inconspicuous clothing, dominates the centre of the painting. She gazes towards the viewer with a featureless face, as if waiting for us to join her. 

The work is unusual but beautiful, with a clear and stylised muted palette. Despite the vagueness of details, the painting carries a sensorial atmosphere, with Green’s attention to detail particularly prominent in regard to the accuracy of the crashing waves in the background. The swash is rendered in short white strokes, creating a true sense of movement as the wave rolls into the beach and towards the three figures.

Margaret Green 

Margaret Green was born in Hartlepool in 1925, and showed an early affinity for art which was only accentuated after she met artist Patrick Heron on a family holiday. She was encouraged by her family to pursue art, and after graduating from Hartlepool Art School, she won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art at its wartime home in the Lake District. 

Green was a highly successful student at the Royal College of Art, where she was taught by Ruskin Spear and Carel Wright. During her studies, Green won plenty of awards and prizes for her art. One such prize was a travelling scholarship around France and Ireland, an undertaking that she completed with fellow artist Lionel Bulmer, whom she had met at the Royal College and who would later become her husband.  The two moved to Chelsea after the war, painting images of everyday postwar life in London. Both artists took up supplementary jobs as teachers in art schools, with Green working between an art school in Walthamstow and the Royal Academy schools.

Green and Bulmer took regular trips to Sussex to paint the countryside there. Becoming increasingly enamored with rural scenery, Green and Bulmer moved to a medieval hall house in the Suffolk countryside, renovating the house into an artist’s paradise where they produced many paintings, often working in the same small room together. They travelled to Walberswick and Southwold to paint beach scenes, and often exhibited these at the New English Art Club. As well as exhibiting with the NEAC, Green showed her works with the Royal Academy, the London Group, William Ware Gallery, Fulham Gallery, the South London Gallery, and Leicester Gallery. Eventually, Green had a solo exhibition at the New Grafton Gallery in 1972.

Green’s bond with Bulmer was so strong that their artistic styles began to become indistinguishable. To mitigate this, Bulmer decided to experiment with pointilism, and Margaret began to use cooler tones within her works and her paintings became gradually smaller in size. 

The two lived a happy life in their artist’s paradise, making their own wine and farming their own garden, until Bulmer passed away in 1992. Green was so overtaken with grief that she never produced another painting. A retrospective of both artists was held in 2002 at Messum Fine Art and recounted the journey of both of the artists from London to Suffolk.

Green passed away in 2003. A posthumous exhibition of her and Bulmer’s work was held at Messum Fine Art and focused on the artistic bond between the two. Her work is held in public galleries in Leeds, Coventry, Nottingham, the Tate Britain, and Hartlepool.