Eva Porter exhibited regularly with the Belfast Art Society/ RUA from an address on the King’s Road, Knock, in Belfast. She was active from 1923 – 53 and worked mainly in watercolour, specialising in landscapes and garden scenes. She also supplied Scholastic Productions Ltd., Belfast with artwork for their postcards published during the 1940/50s.
Three Scholastic postcards “Springtime“, “An Old World Cottage” and “Headlands”.
That is the sum total of information that I have been able to dredge up on the artist after exhaustive searching online, contacting the various NI Arts bodies, Belfast Forums, the Linen Hall Library, and other obvious institutions. I have recently been in touch with the Knock Church of Ireland authorities in the hope that she may have been one of their parishioners and I’m awaiting further news.
I love collecting the work of lesser known artists and researching them, but ending up drawing a complete blank is very frustrating. I wouldn’t mind if it was just Eva Porter, but there’s a growing list of artists that I just can’t track down. These include Terence Henry, Leslie Murdoch, Pat Mac Cormack and Robert Barlow – the one thing they all have in common is that they supplied their work to Scholastic Productions, but that company went out of business in the 1950s.
“A Country Road” which I purchased at Ross’s – August 2016 for £31.00 incl.buyer’s premium.
Thus far I have purchased a couple of her watercolours and several of the equally scarce postcards. A couple of weeks ago I thought that I had struck the mother lode when five of her paintings came up for sale at Rosebery’s (London), but it wasn’t to be. A lot of searching around and organising of a courier, contacting a UK dealer to make sure that they weren’t going to be bidding, contacting the auctioneers for additional photographs and I was all set. However, come the big day, and thirty minutes before the start of sale, I log into the Saleroom.com auction portal and sign-up for the auction only to find out that as a new client of Rosebery’s they would require bank/credit card details and more. I couldn’t comply with their requirements in time and lost the pictures to the only other bidder for just £140.00. It was the first time that I have encountered this problem when bidding through the Saleroom.com and it will certainly be the last time that I bother with Rosebery’s.
“Club Prize Day, Bangor, Co.Down” watercolour – sold with four others at Rosebery’s 1/10/2016 for £140.00!
Years ago this would have put me in a bad mood for a week, but these days I’m more laid back and tell myself that it wasn’t meant to be. Annoying, but a First World problem in the greater scheme of things!
So the search goes on and any help would be much appreciated.
Art for Art's Sake! 