Chilcotts to auction previously unreleased artwork by illustrator Ken Evans

A selection of distinctive paintings by an artist whose original work has never been sold before will be auctioned at Chilcotts’ July 15 sale in Honiton.

Ken Evans was born in Staffordshire in 1924. He was related to the celebrated Irish poet WB Yeats and his painter brother Jack, but grew up impoverished, his father an itinerant farm labourer.

He decided at an early age that he was going to be an artist and as a teenager attended evening classes at Wolverhampton College where he studied drawing with cartoonist Norman Thelwell before following a career in the 1950s and ‘60s as a cartoonist and illustrator. One of his biggest successes was a regular cartoon strip, ‘Skippy’. Published in the Sketch, this was about a tug boat skipper on the Thames.

Ken Evans didn’t actually take up painting full time until he was 47. His work was experimental and he painted in several different styles; paintings from the early 1970s have a gritty, urban quality, whilst art from his ‘whimsical’ period echo the post World War 1 Surrealist movement. By contrast, his gentler country scenes depict rural life with a humorous twist, similar to Beryl Cook. Many of these paintings were used for greetings cards and are very recognisable.

He preferred traditional mediums and his favourite was egg tempera, an egg-based emulsion which is quick to dry; most of his paintings took just two weeks to complete.

During his career and up until his death in 1987, Ken Evans exhibited widely in the provinces, made several television appearances and was included in a number of major London exhibitions such as the Royal Society of Watercolour Artists Gallery, Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Royal Society of British Artists and the Lord Mayor's Annual Award.

Auctioneer Duncan Chilcott said: “We have a collection of twelve of Ken’s original paintings in the July auction, including a self-portrait of the man himself. It’s exciting as his work is something of an unknown quantity at market.

“The artworks have been kept in the family loft since his death so it’s actually the first time they will have been on public view as well as for sale.”

The pictures will be sold with copyright so buyers can use them to create and sell prints and cards, if desired.

Art has become an increasingly successful are of business for Chilcotts. In the March sale, a Duncan Grant painting sold for £42,000, the highest price achieved for any artwork by this particular artist outside of London; the result was reported in industry ‘bible’, the Antiques Trade Gazette.