William Fletcher 1907-1986
William (Bill) Fletcher was born in Birkenhead in 1907. From a young age, Bill showed a talent for drawing and painting, inspired by the transatlantic liners that docked at the quay side in Liverpool and the paintings in the Walker Gallery.
The Fletcher family was closely connected with the sea; most of Bill’s uncles were ship’s captains and mariners. His grandfather went to sea when he was 14 and his father at 16. When Bill was young the family moved from Merseyside to Workington, then an important port and industrial town on the Cumbrian coast.
After leaving school Bill was apprenticed to a local solicitor in Workington, but his passion was painting, drawing and exploring the lakes, mountains of the Lake District and Cumberland coast. soon after the lake District National Park was formed in 1951 Bill became a voluntary warden.
In 1955 Bill took up a position as the Bursar of Pelham House School in Calder Bridge, which allowed him more time to indulge these passions. When he retired he moved to Gosforth and continued to paint and exhibit until around 1980 when ill health forced him to produce a few last paintings from memory and sketches.
Bill died in 1986 in Whitehaven.
Many of his paintings were landscapes, particularly views around Wasdale and Ennerdale where he was a voluntary warden, or other lakes and mountains of the Western fells.
Other common subjects for his paintings were the coastal sand dunes around Drigg and Ravensglass, and seascapes with sailing and steam ships remembered and imagined from his youth.
Sometimes he would use industrial landscapes as subjects including the construction of Calder Hall Nuclear Power Station and the “Blue Works” at Backbarrow.
Bill and his wife Lilian often travelled around Scotland and Ireland where he would paint landscapes; many were studies or sketches that were completed back in Cumberland.
His painting style developed over the years from small delicate paintings using oils or watercolour and Gouache to larger much looser watercolours. He often painted in-situ using a wooden easel and while wearing his distinctive gold framed half-moon glasses which he occasionally lost.
The colours used in his watercolour paintings tended towards natural tones including yellow and Brown Ochre, raw and burnt Sienna, raw and burnt umber, for shadows and distant mountains he would use French ultra-marine and blue celadon washes for the sky.
Encouraged by his wife Lilian, oil paint was apply thickly and boldly using both brush and pallet knife. The colours in his oil paintings tended to be more vibrant with some unmixed paint used for highlighting.
Bill would generally sign his paintings “WFletcher” in red or dark blue with no date and with very little gap between the W and F. His earlier paintings were signed “WF” or “W FLETCHER”. Some paintings I have are unsigned are probably unfinished.
Bill knew other artists who lived in the Lake District and often visited Josefina de Vasconcellos and her husband Delmar Banner who lived in Little Langdale. He also compiled data for William Heaton Cooper’s book ‘Tarns of the Lakeland’ with help from the boys from Pelham House School, who carried a small rowing boat up the mountains to measure the depths of the tarns!!