James Lindsey Bird was born in Crook, County Durham in 1903, the son of a composer and brought up in the strict Methodist tradition. He attended Middlesbrough High School and later studied Fine Art at Armstrong College, Newcastle. In 1921 he left the north of England for London, attending the Royal College of Art, where for the first year he studied Painting and Architecture, changing his second subject to Engraving, at which he excelled.

This exhibition contains works in pencil, pen and ink, engraving, pastel, watercolour and oil from different periods of the artists life, including a portrait of his father painted when he was just sixteen years old, a section of which is shown here.

In 1931, Lindsey won a travelling Scholarship to Italy, and was accompanied by his young wife. On his return a year later he took up his first teaching post as Painting Master at Batley School of Art, where he took charge of drawing, painting and design classes. Returning to the north of England subsequently brought about a change in his work; northern. landscapes started to dominate his subject matter.

At the start of the second world war, he applied to be a war artist, but to his disappointment was turned down. He did, however become a fire-watcher, and it was at this time that his drawings and sketches of the home guard appeared. After his divorce in 1944, he painted what he claimed to be his most personal work, ‘Cyclamen’ (included in this exhibition), which took over two years to complete and was his first painting to be accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy.

In 1946 he was appointed Head of Art at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Darlington. Here his interest in landscapes developed remarkably, with many of his works at this time set in the North Yorkshire Moors; the Esk Valley becoming a particular favourite.

In 1947, in Whitby in North Yorkshire, Lindsey Bird married his second wife, May Edwards, then a Health Visitor. Throughout the forties, most of his subject matter was taken from the striking landscapes around Darlington, and it was at this time that his interest in portrait painting developed. In 1952, he moved his new family to a large house on Stanhope Road in Darlington, offering enough space to have a studio of his own. Here he painted many portraits, including past masters of the school. He also developed an interest in drawing and painting many of the buildings and streets of Darlington; in some cases recording them before they were demolished.

1963 saw the visit of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to the 400th Anniversary of the Grammar School. The following year James Lindsey Bird ARCA was granted the honour of a portrait sitting with the Queen Mother in the drawing room at Clarence House. The subsequent portrait in oils hung in the school for many years and is now part of Darlington Borough Art Collection.

After twenty years as Head of the Art Department, the artist retired to devote more time to his own work and to the running of Gallery 2 in Darlington. He suffered a stroke, and was frustrated at its impact on his drawing and painting. He moved to Scorton in North Yorkshire and produced a variety of work including illustrated articles for ‘The Dalesman’ thereafter, and remained creative until his sudden death in 1972.

We hope this exhibition may be seen by some of the people who knew the artist, that it will please people who have seen some of his work before, and that it will introduce his work to others.

Darlington Borough Council thanks Colin Bainbridge, Daphne Bird, and Oliver Bird, for loaning some of the works by James Lindsey Bird ARCA (Associate of the Royal College of Art) they hold in their collections to this exhibition.