A retrospective exhibition of works by Ursula McCannell will take place at the Fosse Gallery in Stow-on-the-Wold from Sunday, May 8 to Saturday, May 28.

There will be around 30 works, mostly oil on canvas apart from a small selection of drawings, dating from the 1980s and 1990s with some available to purchase, prices range from £950 for the drawings and up to £15,000 for the oils.

Born in 1923, Ursula McCannell was the only child of the painter Otway McCannell.

In 1936, at the age of 13, she visited Spain just before the Spanish Civil War and the experience had a profound and continuing effect on her work. 

Themes that she developed at this time, the atmosphere of unease and the depiction of people at the edge of society remained with her for ever.

At the same age she showed at the Wertheim Gallery before holding her first major exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London when she was 16.

This led to her being elected the youngest member of the Woman's International Art Society and the youngest exhibitor at both the New English Art Club and the Royal Academy in 1940. 

By the age of 17, The Contemporary Art Society had bought a self-portrait for The Manchester City Art Gallery.

Whilst studying at the Royal College of Art she became impatient with the constraints of the Painting School and transferred to the Mural Department where she met Peter Rees Roberts whom she later married.

After graduating, they settled in Farnham where she remained until her death in 2015. 

However, this pretty Georgian town was never the subject of her work. It was the rough landscapes of Spain, Ireland and Croatia, and the people who inhabited them, that were her lifelong subjects.

  • The exhibition can be viewed on-line at fossegallery.com from mid-April. The Fosse Gallery opening hours are Monday - Saturday, 10.30am-5pm. The Private View is on Sunday 8th May from 11am-4pm.