A SILSDEN man hopes someone may be able to shed light on an artist thought to have starved to death in the early 20th century.

Colin Neville is seeking information about William Stevens for his blog, notjusthockney, which features about 150 local artists.

William Capeling Stevens was born at Fairweather Green in 1870, the son of Edward Stevens, a cashier for John White and Sons tannery. The family moved to Shipley, where they lived for 30 years.

William studied art at Saltaire School of Art, where he showed an aptitude for oil and watercolour painting. He later moved to London to study at the South Kensington School of Art (later the Royal College of Art). His work was exhibited at venues including the New Gallery in London and at a Royal Society of British Artists exhibition.

He returned to Yorkshire and rented a house at Albert Terrace, Saltaire. William became a familiar figure on Shipley Glen, sketching. Most of his scenes were of Airedale and Wharfedale landscapes, but he was also a gifted portrait painter.

He was an eccentric and what Colin describes as “mercurial in temperament”.

“He could behave in unpredictable ways,” says Colin. “His step-sister, in a newspaper interview in the 1940s, said of William: ‘He was talented with his brushes, but so very eccentric. He used to say money won’t buy my pictures and carry it to the length of denying himself necessities in order to buy materials. Often he would refuse to eat anything except brown bread and green apples.’

“She recalled how he was sensitive about his unfinished work, to the point that, on one occasion, discovering his father had showed one of his unfinished studies to a visitor, William furiously slashed the canvas with a knife.”

According to a report from October 1970, William was once commissioned to paint a portrait of a successful Shipley builder, but when he brought some friends to see the painting, they made the mistake of rummaging through other artwork in the studio, infuriating Stevens, who threw them out and cut the portrait into strips, parcelled it up and gave it to the maid at the builder’s house.

His eccentric behaviour meant he rarely sold work that wasn’t commissioned, and he would dig a friend’s garden for payment of vegetables, and often paid his rent to Salts Mill in pictures.

On January 9, 1911, William was found dead in his house. An inquest decided the cause was ‘apoplexy’, but a rumour spread he had died of starvation. His house contained many paintings and his friend, Bertram Heaton, bought most of them when they were auctioned off, mostly for a few shillings each.

Heaton arranged a one-man show of his friend’s work at Bradford Central Library in 1970. More than 40 works were shown.

Colin welcomes additional information about William Stevens and any images of his work. Visit notjusthockney.info for more details.