They are just three from over 700 – now available from Heather’s Collection website as mounted prints, easily framed for individual décor.
Now, I look back on all those years to 1987 and wonder how a chance meeting with Heather not only changed my life but also led us through 20 collaborative years.
But I’ll start at the beginning:
While I had experience sketching local scenes, my attempts were amateurish. As a sideline to selling houses in the eighties, I found that by hand colouring – these sketches sold readily and that to meet demand, it only required some outside help.
Weeks and weeks went by, as local artists replied, returning their colouring efforts to me. One of them was Heather Simmonds.
It was only later, after we’d met that Heather demonstrated her skill. The small – delicate watercolours she painted from photographs had immediate appeal. They captured the atmosphere of English towns and villages in memorable detail.
Before long I was marketing – not houses – but Heather’s prints and pictures. Many shops would stock their local scenes year on year.
The website has a collection of her work (Image: heathersimmonds.co.uk) It was the beginning of a collaboration that continued for more than 20 years, during which time a very large number of small pictures were sold for the home – in particular, views of Arundel Castle and Bosham in Sussex and Jane Austen’s house at Chawton in Hampshire.
Although we met frequently, only glimpses of Heather’s former life emerged. Born in 1934, her childhood years were spent in Hampshire, Sussex, and the Isle of Wight.
Her artistic talent led to a scholarship to Italy to study Renaissance painting and her subsequent membership in the R.M.S. (Royal Miniaturist Society), where she exhibited several times in the 1960s.
There were years of design work in the aviation industry, and later, Heather ran a gift shop with her mother. So, after early artistic training, basic necessity shaped the pattern of her life.
When we met in 1987, Heather was looking after her elderly mother, two cats and a sizeable garden. Home commitments meant she was not able to travel far, and in the composition of atmospheric local scenes, she immersed herself at times away from household chores, finding another dimension and freedom of artistic expression, far removed from the critical scrutiny of earlier years.
By 2008, the collection of scenes across Southern England had reached more than 750. Retirement to Dorset meant the marketing of prints and pictures was coming to an end. Or so I thought…
After Heather’s death in 2012, there was plenty of time to reflect on the past – frequent visits to Jane Austen’s house – the to and fro of swallows in the old building – subsequent quiet chats with Heather and her cats – some of the fading memories I would not forget.
Almost a decade went by before I realised Heather’s legacy would be in jeopardy without her own collection website.
This was achieved in 2022, and once again, her unique style is available to all at heathersimmonds.co.uk
David Haycraft
Burlington Road,
Swanage
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