Helen Bradley (1900-1979), Late September by a lovely tarn on Hampsfell. It was early evening and all was still..., signed with fly symbol, inscribed and signed 'Helen Layfield Bradley' with date 1966, watercolour, 26 x 36cm.; 10.25 x 14.25in. * Bradley was born in 1900 in Lees a small town near Oldham and attended the local art school at Oldham where her main interests were designing jewellery and embroidery. She had not intended to be a professional painter and married a textile designer and settled into life as a house wife and mother of two children. When she was sixty-five she began to paint images of her childhood in Lancashire to illustrated the wonderfully woven stories and reminiscences she told her grandchildren. Her paintings were greatly admired and several exhibitions of her work were held in the 1960s and 1970s. L. S. Lowry was a particular admirer of her naive style of painting which is both powerfully nostalgic and sensitive. It has been suggested that her style derives from early Persian and Moghul art.