My son-in-law’s mother, Julia Heseltine, who has died aged 89, was an artist whose portraiture accompanied a successful, lifelong career producing paintings in a variety of styles. Her subjects included Joan Plowright and Ted Hughes, as well as coastal and rural scenes. Her work has appeared in the Royal Academy and many regional galleries.
Julia was born in St Pancras, London, to Guy Heseltine, an army colonel, and Anna Zinkeisen. Anna and her sister, Julia’s aunt, Doris, were hugely productive and often fashionable artists, particularly in the 1920s and 30s but also for decades after that. They worked in illustration, portraiture, design, fashion, film and theatre. As a young girl, Julia helped her mother in the studio, the more so when expelled from Heathfield school, in Ascot, Berkshire, aged 14. She went to the Chelsea School of Art, on to Byam Shaw School of Art and, finally, to the Royal Academy Schools. While at the RA (1952-57) she picked up a silver medal from the Paris Salon. It was also where she met the sculptor Anthony Weller, with whom she subsequently shared a studio. They were married in 1962.
Chelsea in the 50s and 60s was a focus for bohemian reaction to postwar austerity. Julia remembered trying to complete a commission as people partied on the roof. Despite the distractions, her work appeared in many London galleries and went into private collections in the UK and abroad. From the beginning, she took on portrait commissions as well as commercial art, and within the portraits she often introduced semi-abstract views of nature.
In the 60s, Julia’s mother was living and working in Looms Cottage in Burgh, Suffolk, and Julia and Anthony visited regularly. Julia’s son, Sam, was born in 1970 and the family moved to the cottage after Anna’s death in 1976. Later, they moved to Tuddenham in the same county. Julia’s studio was busy with both commissioned work and her own portraits and landscapes. Her paintings developed an increasingly surreal, often dreamlike, intensity. Over time, they also developed a significant connection to Suffolk and its people, exploring the county’s life with a penetrating humour.
Julia and Anthony separated in 1981, and he died 10 years later. Julia was with the illustrator Jerry Malone for many years; he died in 2012. She remained close to his children, Dan, Bec and Justin. Julia continued to paint every day in her Tuddenham studio until the last few months of her life. Her granddaughter, Bonnie, learned to paint at her granny’s knee, just as Sam did at his mother’s and she at hers.
Julia is survived by Sam and Bonnie.
