Marie Walker Last (1917-), The Eye of the Wind, signed, inscribed and dated 1963 on verso, oil on canvas, 90 x 120cm.; 35.5 x 47.25in. * She trained at the Chelsea School of Art, under Vivian Pitchforth and, later under Sir Terry Frost and Robert Medley. She and her husband were great friends of Ben Nicholson and Dame Barbara Hepworth, and she mixed in London with many of the great painters of the day; she also met Alfred Wallis, who was such a great influence on the work of Ben Nicholson. In her earlier days, she exhibited world-wide, with Exhibitions in London, Paris, Athens, Florence and Australia, and in 1988, she won First Prize in the Druce Constable Award at an exhibition of contemporary British landscape painting in the Camden Arts Centre. Her works are in the Collections of the Bank of England, the Halifax Building Society, Granada Television, the Arthur Haigh Collection, the Open University, Yorkshire Television, Bradford Art Galleries and Museums and the Universities of Leeds, Bradford and York.