PAINTING en plein air may be a familiar concept, but most artists confine it to sketching, working up canvases in the studio. Lucy Kemp-Welch, however, took the practice a stage further with the construction of a giant packing case (see box). Within this, she would store her enormous paintings, some as large as 10ft by 5ft, in situ, returning day after day to capture plunging horses and tired farmhands, shaggy ponies and brave lifeboatmen. For her, photography was anathema, it was ‘too perfect. It can never leave room for personal temperament to show. All is there except the creative effort’. Absorbed in her work, she frequently lost track of time or what meal she was being called for. Stopping to eat could be problematic; once, she returned to her canvas to find cows had licked off the paint.
Lucy and her sister, Edith, began drawing as soon as they could write, their parents encouraging an interest
