AN ARTIST who achieved huge popularity for his larger-than-life pictures of old Keighley has died at the age of 82.

Howard Turner specialised in colourful scenes from the 1920s and 1930s populated by well-known local eccentrics of the era.

He painstakingly recreated the locations from his youth in a leaky studio at the house he shared in Ickornshaw with artist wife Sheila Turner.

The pair moved to the hamlet near Cowling in the 1980s to take up a painting full-time after moving from Cumbria.

The pair had moved around the country during Howard’s working life as a hospital administrator, including a remote cottage near Doncaster where Howard had home-delivered daughter Susan.

Susan said: “My dad was my first breath and I saw his last breath so it’s like a circle of life.”

Howard, born in 1934, dabbled with painting during his working life as relaxation after the challenges of the working day.

In Ickornshaw, while Sheila painted her acclaimed landscapes in comfortable surroundings upstairs, Howard’s studio was an old ‘lean-to’ at the back of the cottage.

Susan said: “He would work in there for hours and the windows would steam up because of the rain dripping through, but he’d just wrap himself up warm and get to work while playing classical music.”

Howard soon achieved local fame for his pictures, peopled with real-life characters like Spud Mick, Nellie Nit Nurse and Clogger Kennedy.

He was also member of the Yorkshire Itinerants group of artists who got together to raise money for charity.

Howard painted until recent years, and following his wife’s stroke last year he contracted bladder cancer.

He was treated at Manorlands hospice in Oxenhope before moving to Beanlands nursing home in Cross Hills, where he died in July.

Howard and Sheila were due to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on November this year.

The couple had five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Susan said: “My father was very gentle man who had a wicked sense of humour. He was very much a man of words and loved his books.

“One of dad’s all time favourite quotes, which always made him chuckle, was ‘Trop tard, l'âne est dans l'arbre!’ which translates as ‘Too late, the donkey is in the tree!’.”

Friends are asked to make a donation to Manorlands or Beanlands in his memory.

Susan intends to fulfil their father’s wish for one of his favourite paintings to be donated to Manorlands.