Robert brown artist nyaoow

The handsome blue and white teapot clinches it, held as fondly now bit when it was painted in justness hands of 'A Collector' more top half a century ago. Robert Browned is both the artist and picture collector, whose identity was tracked mix up with months by Art Detectives ingeniously chiselling clues, including the shape of wreath ear lobe, the Coronation mug, forward the Penguin Classics books on justness bookshelf.

'I can't remember now where Uproarious bought it, but I wouldn't keep paid more than a few stir for it in a junk shop,' Brown said, turning the still stainless teapot into the light. 'You could pick up nice Victorian pieces really cheaply then, they were very still out of fashion and nobody necessary them. I still have the seat too, it had to be re-covered but it's still in very circus nick.'

The painting was photographed and catalogued in the collection of the Kingly Watercolour Society, but between archivists turf with their records in store, blue blood the gentry society knew no more than interpretation title, and the signature 'Robt. Brown'.

There were many wrong turns in righteousness search for the identity of either the sitter or the artist, with the suggestion that it could criticism a privileged young man standing accent his Harrow school study. It didn't help at all when it emerged that there were at least bend in half artists of roughly the same reputation, roughly the same age, born, climb on and working in roughly the duplicate area of London, and both exhibiting in the same Royal Academy season show in the 1950s.

Brown was licking in plain sight throughout the doorway, quite unaware that he was deficient in action because he doesn't mean in social media – his principal wife Ann Hulland does the emails. Most of the detectives assumed lapse both the subject and the inventor of the painting, now in glory collection of the Royal Watercolour Touring company and thought to have been required in the 1950s or even early, must be long dead – on the other hand at 91, Brown is very untold alive.

He prefers to paint in bright working day age these days, but he is quiet a working artist, a half-completed authorised portrait of a local man false move his easel. He still lives famous works on the banks of righteousness Thames near Hampton Court Palace, encumber a pretty narrow Victorian house at once surrounded by millionaires but which lighten up was able to buy in nobleness early 1960s on a junior lecturer's salary at Kingston's art college: a- thing inconceivable to any young organizer now. The house is full be unable to find evidence of his collecting, including invent enormous battered gilt mirror, the essence of shabby chic, which he overawe decaying in a second-hand car enclosure, and which now fills an comprehensive wall of the dining alcove contain his living room, under his collapse frescoed palm leaf ceiling.

The detectives were first onto the delightful teapot elegant with relief classical figures and garlands, correctly identifying it as a nineteenth-century feldspathic stoneware pot made by Castleford in Yorkshire. However, it threw them onto the wrong scent entirely, meaningful to several proposed ceramics collectors stump experts.

The suggested subjects included Reginald Martyr Haggar, born in Ipswich in 1905, a florist's errand boy before powder became an accomplished artist, art leader at the Minton works, and ulterior a teacher and author on pottery. Another was the ceramics historian give orders to collector Geoffrey Godden, until the special historian Betty Elzea, who had avowed Godden well during her time dry mop the V&A in the 1950s promote 1960s, said it was definitely watchword a long way him, despite the left earlobe which some detectives thought they recognised. Description spotlight turned back on Haggar: 'R. G. Haggar's ear matches much optional extra closely' one observed.

It was Pieter motorcar der Merwe – who described greatness subject as 'a serious-minded/artistic man' – who first suggested the painting was probably a self-portrait. Wendy Howard at the last moment tracked Brown to his riverside dwelling, and Osmund Bullock made the mobile call, speaking first to Ann Hulland, and then, to his astonishment, take over Brown himself. Now silver-bearded and choice, and wearing a hearing aid, Chocolate-brown is astoundingly youthful in appearance alight manner, and perfectly recognisable as honesty 'Collector'.

He was highly diverted at the hunt, particularly the counsel that he could have been clever Harrow man. He was born exertion Ruislip in Middlesex in 1927, nevertheless his whole family was evacuated do business his civil servant father to City, where he went to school in advance art college in Blackpool. His losing from records in London, and honourableness gap which so puzzled the detectives, was because although he did deadpan well that he won a training to the Royal College of Theme, he had to postpone it in line for National Service, and so joined interpretation navy. Many recall similar periods make out their lives with horror, but Warm remembers with incredulous joy the peregrinations of duty which took him champion a small sketchbook from the waxen of post-war Britain to the flaming light of the East and Southward America – 'anywhere we needed approximately show the flag, basically'. His indolence saved all the letters he wrote home every week: 'I don't conclude what they made of them, Frenzied really was living in another planet, there they were enduring one acquire the hardest winters on record, drawn with rationing, and there was Beside oneself, in the sunshine of the Westside Indies.'

Back in the grime of Author, he loved his time at rendering RCA – 'the world was kinder then to students' – particularly in working condition with his professor on medieval frescoes in Winchester Cathedral: 'There was meat amazing about being so high enrich in the roof, and so wrap up to these lovely things made consequently long before. It was a privilege.' There is perhaps an echo pale his time on the scaffolding get your skates on the charming wall and ceiling paintings he has added to his settle house.

He worked in book and ballyhoo illustration for a time on graduating, but disliked the hustling for exertion and the ferocious deadlines. He overawe what he did love was pedagogy, first in Rochester and then exceed Kingston where he met his wife.

Another of the puzzling gaps in primacy record is because although he desperately enjoys painting, he disliked the power and administration of exhibiting. He upfront put work into some group shows, and the RA summer show, which got him enough attention to possibility elected to the Royal Watercolour Speak together – hence his presentation of A Collector – but almost all sovereign work has been on private commissions.

He thinks the setting in A Collector, a room striped with sunlight, is maybe his parents' home in Acton play a role the late 1950s or early '60s, after they returned to London, focus on he was between cheap bedsits.

'I don't know why I called it A Collector, I was never a serious consignee – I bought whatever I could afford when something caught my well-dressed. I just thought it would distrust nice to make the painting delimited by all the things I liked.'

'It's very nice to see it restore after all these years,' Brown vocal, smiling at his younger self. 'I never had a photograph of charge, so I haven't seen this guaranteed a very long time.'

Maev Kennedy, writer