Following Paine’s death in 1967 his friend and neighbour, Desmond Rexworthy, wrote a tribute for the Jersey Evening Post.

Charles Paine – A Tribute

            Charles Paine who was born in Lancashire in 1895 and died on Friday at his home, La Guerdainerie Cottage, Trinity, was a child of God, a man whose humour and love of convivial conversation overlay an unusually fine sensibility and sensitivity.   An artist. academically professed in Glasgow and in California, his own works were predominantly in watercolour based on the most meticulous craftsmanship.   His love of Jersey where he settled first on Gorey Pier just after the last war, is evident from his paintings of Mont Orgueil Castle in particular.  

            There is a beautiful stained glass window executed by him in a church in Scotland.   Details show his delight for the simple things of nature – the butterfly, the snowdrop at the foot of Christ a Jersey calf lies with a baby donkey, the face of his Madonna is that of a Breton worker seen in a Jersey field.   When funds ran out for the execution of this work he completed it from his own pocket.  

            Book illustration and posters were among his early work.   He was one of the few original contemporary painters, among them McKnight Kaufer, commissioned for the London Passenger Transport Board before the war whose posters on the Underground played so positive a part in the unconscious education of recent generations of art.

            During the last two years in his studio at La Guerdainerie, he was working on a study of sky and tide at the Ecréhous which was to be a sublimation of his technique of dynamic synthesis.   Inspiration was not visual alone – music provided the discipline for his composition.   The counter-currents at the turn of the tide about the rocks, the very structure of the skyscape, both were portrayed over a synthesis of geometric construction of infinite variation based upon the recurrent relationships of the Bach fugue.

            To be his friend was an experience of depth;  for the few, his passing leaves a sore lack which can only be compensated by the love of God.   For the many, his art survives, although he eschewed exhibition and publicity during his life.

A Correspondent

Jersey Evening Post 10th July 1967