Reclining nude dated 18 March 1966.
Paine attended life drawing classes during the year before his death in 1967.
Saint Francis. Undated. Signed lower right ‘Charles Paine’.
No doubt the drawing reflects the legend of St. Francis preaching to the birds. Even the fish are drawn by his holiness.
I don’t know which saints are represented. Undated.
Pencil study for Observer Jack Cliff
Observer Jack Cliff, Part B Passed for Publication 26 Oct 1942 Press and Censorship Bureau
See post March 10, 2018
Studies for baby face
John Duke of Marlborough
Undated
Study for black king in the memorial window Paine designed for Queen’s Park High Parish Church, Queen’s Drive, Glasgow. (cf. post October 23, 2017)
The following are unnamed and undated
Paine was renowned for his cartoons though he was never, so far as is known, a professional cartoonist. This cartoon in celebration of the New Year could be a scene from The Wind in the Willows. It was drawn for John Platt during the 1930s.
‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot . . .’ Blackheath 1930s
(Reproduced by kind permission of the estate of John Platt)
Jocelyn Morton observed that Paine’s ‘whimsical personality’ was as striking as ‘the imaginative quality of his work’. (Jocelyn Morton Three Generations of a Family Textile Firm: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1971) He reproduced this letter from Paine to his father, James Morton.
Mrs Hards, Paine’s neighbour at Welwyn, told how these little comments on his neighbours and fellow citizens would appear on her doormat at regular intervals. She recalled how one of Paine’s ‘caricatures of a Mrs. Stock with “rather protruding teeth” was left accidentally on the seat at a concert she had organised.’ (Charles Paine 1895 -1967 Article by Ambrose Hogan and Sue Kirby, Welwyn Hatfield Museum Service 1992)
Charles Paine and Joan Bolshaw were married at Holy Trinity Church, Horwich, Lancashire, on 18 October 1962. Paine was 67 and Joan was 48. They honeymooned for two weeks in London and Tunbridge Wells before returning to Gorey Pier. Paine commented on events in a series of cartoons.
Don’t forget the ring.
The honeymoon
Married bliss
Joan’s sister, Greta, lived at Horwich in Lancashire and Paine got on very well with her Scottish husband, Mac (Bertie McPherson), a retired railway engineer. Mac was short and stout, humorous and fond of a dram and Charles was tall and lean and by no means a teetotaler. Rivington Pike is a summit of Winter Hill and is clearly visible from Horwich. They would be sent out every day for a walk with the dogs, Joe, a golden retriever, and Mungo, a black labrador. This birthday card commemorates these events.
Paine as a Scotsman
Paine as a rattlesnake
This was probably drawn one evening at The Moorings Hotel, Gorey, during the early 1960s.
All I know about this baby cartoon is that it makes me smile.
Undated
This is my only record of this watercolour. The location of the courtyard is unknown though it is probably in Jersey and painted during the 1950s, perhaps in St. Helier.
Paine made a number of preliminary sketches in a notebook which give some indication of colour and show his meticulous preparation and attention to detail.
When Paine returned to London from California in 1931 he ‘resumed private practice and research work’ (Paine’s CV). In addition he was appointed visiting teacher at the Blackheath School of Art*, where the part-time Principal (1929-39) was his friend, John Platt. This appointment terminated on the outbreak of war in 1939 when the school was taken over by the Army.
In 1932 Paine was appointed to reorganise the Training School Design and Drawing classes at the Royal School of Needlework, a task completed in 1934. John Platt, was instrumental in obtaining the appointment. Paine expressed his gratitude with this cartoon of himself, crowned with triumph, plying a needle at a sewing frame.
(Reproduced by kind permission of the estate of John Platt.)
I have no further information regarding Paine’s work at the RSN. The study for the first greetings telegram (cf. posts October 17, 2017; October 20 2017) indicates that he retained a connection through the 1930s.
Charles Paine was born at 25 Charles Street, at Pendleton in the district of Salford, in Lancashire, on 23 October 1895. His twin brother, Ernest, died in December 1896. Another sibling also died. His sister, Gertrude, was born at Pendleton in 1889. Paine said that he was so small at birth he would have fitted into a milk jug. He described himself as a ‘mischievous person’ who enjoyed life and worked hard. As a boy he was constantly getting into trouble. He used to walk home from school along a canal and sit on horse-drawn barges and travel many miles from home. His mother, Fanny Godwin, probably from a farming family at Macclesfield, was born in 1861. She married Charles Paine Senior at Salford in 1888. She died at Carshalton in Surrey in 1935. The 1911 census records her as Head of the household aged 48 while he was ‘out of the country on business’. 
Paine’s father, Charles, was the manager of an India Rubber works though the 1891 census gives his occupation as ‘commercial traveller/manager of rubber works’. According to his third wife (Joan Jefferies née Bolshaw), Charles senior was a strict Methodist and a man with no feeling for art. He expected his son to go into the rubber business but Paine wanted to be an artist. His uncle showed some of his drawings to Gordon Forsyth, art director of Pilkington’s Tile and Pottery Company at Clifton in Greater Manchester and later Director of the Burslem School of Art, who was favourably impressed. Paine’s uncle went to see his father, presumably to persuade him to allow his son to study art, and was ordered out of the house. Charles Paine circa 1906/7
At 16 Paine enrolled at the Salford School of Art under Messrs. P. J. J. Brooks and B. D. Taylor, where he was apprenticed to the craft of making stained glass. He also attended evening classes at the Manchester Municipal School of Art under Richard Glazier. The 1911 census records him as an ‘art student’. In 1915 he graduated from Salford to study at the Royal College of Art in London. At the R.C.A. his ability was recognised and he was awarded a National Scholarship, a precursor of a grants scheme. In 1916 Paine was living at 11 North View, Brentham, Ealing W. In that year he first exhibited at the Royal Academy, a design for a stained glass window.
His father refused to pay for his training or to have anything more to do with him and eventually left all his money to a niece, most probably Gwendoline Worthington, who remained unmarried and died at Lytham St. Annes in 1949. After he left home Paine never saw his father again. His father died in 1940. It is unclear how Paine’s art education was paid for though he was given some financial support at the RCA under a scheme that was the precursor of the government grant scheme. (I need some clarity on this.)
Christmas Social 1916 Royal College of Art
(Paine seated 2nd from right. Others unknown.)
Paine spent a total of six terms at the R.C.A. between October 1915 and 4th July 1919 and graduated with the degree A.R.C.A. His studies were interrupted by the War when in 1917 he was conscripted into the Admiralty Inspection Section. He was said to have learned a lot about gun cotton. One anecdote survives from that time. When the war ended he was in a car going past the famous ‘Cat & Fiddle’ near Buxton, the second highest pub in England, with ‘a dull admiral’. The admiral exclaimed, ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ which Paine evidently found very amusing. He never took himself too seriously and was amused by pomposity in others.
On 1st July 1920 Paine married Marian (‘Marie’) Jane Nelson at St. Stephen’s Green Church in Dublin, an Irishwoman aged 30 whom he probably met in Glasgow.* The Irish conductor and composer Havelock Nelson (1917-1996) was her nephew. Paine’s mother, Fanny, was a witness. His residence is given as Burwin, Accresfield Road, Pendleton Manchester. They had one child, a son, Charles Nelson Paine. It was not a happy marriage. The story was told that while he was out one Sunday Maria’s sister and her husband came to visit. Paine was painting a portrait and his brother-in-law (cf. post December 17, 2017) drew a moustache on it. This, apparently, was the last straw. Paine packed up and left. Nelson was six or seven years old and lived in straitened circumstances with his mother at Dunlaogherie. Thereafter he had very little connection with his father.
Following his graduation from the R.C.A. in 1919, aged 24, CP was appointed Head of the Department of Applied Arts at Edinburgh College of Art with the brief of re-organising the department, the beginning of a distinguished career.
AT WAIKIKI, HAWAII
Front row (left to right): Ah Foo, the cook, R.L.S., Mrs. R.L.S., Lloyd Osbourne Standing: Mrs. M.I. Stevenson, and Isabel Osbourne (Teuila)
‘Teuila’* was the familiar name by which Isobel Osbourne, the step-daughter of Robert Louis Stevenson, was known in Samoa. Her mother Fanny Osbourne married Stevenson in 1880. The last years of his life were spent at Vailima in Samoa where he settled in 1890. Teuila’s luminous autobiography, This Life I’ve Loved (Michael Joseph 1937), describes the rich and exciting life there. She was Stevenson’s secretary for four years until his death in 1894.
Following her mother’s death in 1914 she married the author, poet, playwright and journalist, Edward ‘Ned’ Salisbury Field (1878-1936). Field was an employee and friend of William Randolph Hearst He made drawings for Hearst newspapers, signing them ‘Childe Harold’. As a young news man in his 20’s, Field became the secretary, protégé and possibly lover of Fanny Stevenson (who was 38 years older), after the death of her husband. After Fanny’s death in 1914, Field married her daughter Isobel Osbourne (‘Teuila’), who was 20 years his senior. He became a successful Southern California real estate developer. In the 1920’s oil was discovered on some of his property which made them wealthy.
Isabel Osbourne at Monterrey
by Joseph Strong
Allen Herbert’s House 1896
Watercolour by Isobel Osbourne, Honolulu Academy of Arts
Mrs. Field (Isobel ‘Belle’ Osbourne 1858-1953) was an accomplished artist who continued to study the craft throughout her life. She attended Paine’s popular art classes at the Community Arts in Santa Barbara (cf. post November 26, 2017) during the nineteen-twenties.
Isobel Field 1937
In 1926 the Fields purchased Zaca Lake and surrounding land on Figueroa Mountain near Los Olivos. Isobel built an artist’s studio at Serena and the Field home became a popular meeting place for writers and actors. Paine designed a stained glass window for the house which may still be there. He also helped Mrs. Field to design and execute some murals, giving advice by letter from England.
Mrs Salisbury Field
(From a painting by Alfred Herter)
Mrs. Field was greatly impressed by Paine and evidently thought him a genius. In a letter dated 25 September 1937 she wrote, ‘I can’t understand why you haven’t a crowded class – there never lived anyone who could teach so well – for you some way arouse enthusiasm not only in those who want to draw – but in the pupils who are sent to your class by their parents and arrive perfectly dull and unresponsive’.
Elsewhere she refers to his ‘great and glorious talent – not only to create beauty but to inspire others’ (13 December 1936). And again, ‘In the old days when genius was recognised you’d have been given a Cathedral and told to go ahead and decorate it …’ (25 September 1937) In 1948 she sent Paine her note-book, her ‘Precious Book’. She wrote, ‘This little book has been treasured by me all these years’. The ‘Precious Book’, inscribed ‘What I learned from Mr. Paine’ is now lodged with the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh together with the seventeen letters she wrote to Paine between 1936 and 1948. (cf. post 17 November 2018)
In 1937 Teuila sent Paine a pack of her tarot cards as a present for Anna. His third wife, used them to tell fortunes, guests frequently being entertained with a ‘cut of cards’. They are now owned by Joan Paine’s daughter.
The cards were made by the U.S. Playing Card Co. in Cincinnati, Ohio. The instruction sheet says they are copyright 1897-1904; they were first published in 1899. There are 45 cards in the deck (not 35 as stated in the advertisement); plus 7 with instructions, including a Life Card and an advertising card for the company that isn’t used as part of a reading (it functions as a joker if you’re using the deck for playing cards; evidently the Life Card would be the other joker).
During her time in Hawaii, Mrs. Field (then married to the artist, Joseph Strong), became a friend of King Kalakaua. In her autobiography she says, ‘When the Queen gave a garden party at Iolani Palace, often for the benefit of some charity, I was always asked to tell fortunes. On the backs of my calling cards, I had drawn and painted little symbols – a horseshoe for luck, a bee to signify work, a heart for love, etc. These cards were the beginning of my Teuila Fortune Telling Cards.’
