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Painter in oil who was born in St Albans, Hertfordshire. Educated in Dorset, she studied at Slade School of Fine Art, 1929–33, under Randolph Schwabe and George Charlton. During World War II, while living in Harrogate, West, as secretary and treasurer of the Harrogate Discussion Group, met Phil Rafferty, and the two women formed an intimate relationship that lasted after the war in London. For a time they lodged with the composer and broadcaster Antony Hopkins and his wife, West sometimes paying the rent in pictures. One of West’s best canvases was of the Hopkins’s house in Linden Gardens, Hopkins in the street, his wife at a window, a richly painted, School of Paris-influenced oils. She also painted a portrait of the musician. After many years living nearby in Queen’s Gardens, Bayswater, West finally settled in a cottage at Frithsden, Hertfordshire.

Text source: 'Artists in Britain Since 1945' by David Buckman (Art Dictionaries Ltd, part of Sansom & Company)


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