* Last week, Surbiton resident Beryl Williams spoke of her bid to have late Sutton painter Elva Blacker's works

exhibited in her home town. This week we publish an extract from Mrs Williams' short biography of the painter....

Elva Blacker, born in Carshalton, was the daughter of William Harry Blacker, a photographer who, from 1903 onwards, ran a shop with a studio in the High Street, Sutton.

She had two brothers, Maurice and Kenneth Anthony. The family lived in a large, five bedroom house at Egmont Corner, Sutton. Her family considered there was no money in art and Elva, at the age of 16, was sent to the Regent Street Polytechnic in London to study photography.

She then worked with her father and when he died, in around 1930, she took on his work, running the photographic studio herself.

Later, her interest in painting undiminished, she attended evening classes, and as a part-time student at the Sutton and Cheam School of Arts and Crafts (now SCOLA) she was already known as a brilliant miniaturist. Her weekends were spent painting in miniature.

By 1933, at the age of 25, she had already held exhibitions of her paintings and photographs, and been interviewed by a local news reporter, who described her as a versatile young lady, and so she was to prove.

As a photographic portraitist, her work was displayed at an exhibition held by the Professional Photographic Association, and at The Paris Salon and the Royal Scottish Academy.

Three years later Elva Blacker became a full-time student at the Slade School of Art, London, studying oil painting and sculpture, but also visiting theatres and taking photographs of theatrical people, including George Bernard Shaw, to help with expenses, and in 1939, gaining a fine art diploma.

During this time, and after holding local art and photographic exhibitions in the Sutton area, she held her first London show in Bond Street.

The Sutton Times newspaper of May 8, 1936, reported that Elva Blacker had three miniatures accepted by the Royal Academy and six for an exhibition at Piccadilly for the Society of Miniaturists.

She accepted commissions for portraits, including those from the actress Gladys Cooper and Nina, Duchess of Hamilton and Brandon.

With the outbreak of war, Elva drove vans for the Blood Transfusion Service, and organised a local exhibition in Sutton in aid of the Red Cross, which was opened by Robertson Hare, a well-known actor of that time.

A watercolour depicting blood donors and nurses at a transfusion session was presented to Sutton Council. In 1942, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) as a motor transport driver and was stationed at Biggin Hill.

At first she drove ambulances, later becoming the driver for the intelligence officer.

Other WAAF drivers who knew her at Biggin Hill say she was always sketching. She chose her own subjects WAAF colleagues, RAF ground crew, chaplains, operations rooms and aircrew from many overseas countries, including Australia, South Africa, Canada, Poland and Czechoslovakia, and also free French pilots.

She is recalled as being older than most of the other drivers she was 34 when she enlisted and was a vegetarian.

With wartime rationing and vegetarians in those days often looked upon as cranks, it must have been a difficult diet to follow, but Elva was a good-natured person with boundless energy, and is remembered for having tomatoes and apples tumbling out of her locker, and a stick of celery poking out from her pocket or bag.

August 8, 2002 13:00