Philip Sankey-Barker (1900-90)

My father was born in 1900, and apart from going away to school, university and art school, he lived all his life in Breconshire and Monmouthshire.  For his last 30 years, he lived in the Crickhowell area at Plas Llangattock, where he died in 1990. 

In 1937 he married my mother Cicely Mary Watkins.

My father had a talent for painting from an early age, but did not set out to be an artist, only going to art school (Chelsea) after university and after trying other careers.  He had a great love of the Welsh countryside, particularly the Black Mountains and Radnorshire and was one of the early members of what is now The Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales.  He wrote a booklet, ‘A Book of Breconshire’, published by CPRW, which celebrated the ‘superbly varied heritage of natural and man-made beauty [which] is ours in Breconshire’.

His pictures are imbued with his love of Wales, its mountains, rivers and traditional buildings. He was primarily a landscape painter in watercolours, working mostly out of doors and producing calm paintings which truly reflect the colours of our local landscapes.

 

Patric Sankey-Barker