Look back: Bradford artist Fred Stead

He was born in Saltaire on August 3, 1863. His parents, Samuel and Sarah, were textile workers employed at nearby Salts Mill. His father, a warp dresser, married Sarah, a power-loom weaver, when she was 19. Over the next 20 years she gave birth to 10 children, returning to work at the mill between pregnancies. Frederick was last of to be born, and less than six months later Sarah was dead, aged 46, worn out by her life.

The Stead family shared a house with another family at Caroline Street and the care of the young baby would have been distributed between Fred’s four older sisters. Fred spent his early years in a cramped, noisy household, where the occupants’ lives were governed by the shift demands of the mill, a short walk from their home.

By 1871 the household had thinned out, because of marriages, to a total of seven, including Fred. Samuel Stead, by this time, was unable to work because of rheumatism, but his three remaining sons and two daughters all worked at Salts Mill, including 10-year-old Harriot, who worked part-time.

After leaving school it seems likely that Fred also worked at Salts Mill. However, he attended evening classes at Saltaire Art School, where his talent for art was recognised and encouraged. He was awarded a scholarship to study at the National Art Training School in London (later the Royal College of Art). At the National School he gained Gold and Silver medals for his artwork and was awarded a Travelling Scholarship that took him to Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France to study European art.

The social contrast from his old life in Saltaire to his new life, first in London then in Europe must have been overwhelming. There would have been a whole new, ever shifting set of social etiquettes and a middle-class language to navigate. How does someone in this situation cope at first? And what price would his early family experiences exact on him in the process?’

On his return to Britain, Fred returned to Saltaire. He found work teaching art at both Saltaire and Bradford Art Schools and was also an occasional school inspector for art for the West Riding County Council. He began to paint in earnest. He was a man with something to prove to his peers, particularly those born into the middle-classes - that he was a good as them, if not better. To my mind, he was.

The River at Bingley by Fred Stead. Pic: Salford Museum and Art Gallery (Image: Submitted)

From 1888 he exhibited regularly with the Yorkshire Union of Artists and at exhibitions in Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester. He also exhibited his artwork on over 30 occasions at Royal Academy shows. He used oil and watercolours to paint figurative genre scenes, along with landscapes, particularly of Yorkshire. In 1896 Fred was appointed Head of the Saltaire Art School and married a local teacher and artist, May Greening. The couple lived at Ivy Road, Shipley, and in 1898 their first son, Samuel, was born. A daughter, Varna, and another son, Fred, followed.

Fred’s figurative paintings often featured idealised scenes of childhood, perhaps prompted by his own difficult, motherless early years. You don’t forget a childhood like that and its legacy came out in later life. Fred’s paintings became popular and he was increasingly commissioned to paint portraits. Finding it difficult to combine teaching with his own painting, he resigned from the art college to be a freelance artist.

Among his early portrait commissions was ‘Sisters’, a portrait of Hilda and Mabel Townend, 12 and 10-years-old, daughters of Edmund Townend, a dental surgeon who worked from his home at Cliffe Villas, Manningham. Mabel later reported that for several months she and Hilda went to Fred’s studio and sat for hours every Saturday. Mabel had to hold a heavy Peter Pan book while he painted. The painting was shown at The Royal Academy in 1910 and after Mabel’s death it was passed to relatives in Canada and displayed at the National Art Gallery of Canada.

Sisters was one of Fred's early portraits (Image: Submitted)

Fred’s portrait commissions gave him financial security and supported his other art interests, including Yorkshire landscapes and figurative character study work. His wife was also a successful painter. She too had studied at Saltaire School of Art, then the Royal College of Art, and she taught art at Bradford Girls’ Grammar School. May painted landscapes, flowers and miniatures, mainly watercolour, and her work was exhibited at shows of the Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, Royal Society of Miniature Painters and at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Butterflies by Fred (Image: Submitted)

Fred occasionally featured May in his art. In his 1923 painting ‘Mother and Two Children with a Picnic’ she’s pictured with their daughter and younger son. Fred and May’s son Samuel was killed in 1916, aged 18, on the Western Front in the Somme Offensive.

Fred’s work was bought by collectors in America, Australia and in Britain. He was Chairman of the Society of Yorkshire Artists and a lifetime member of Bradford Art Club. His paintings can be found today in the Bradford Museums and Galleries art collection, and in public art galleries at Calderdale, Salford and Preston.

Shipley Market, Evening by Fred Stead (Image: Submitted)

Fred and May lived at Ghyllwood Drive, Bingley. Fred died on January 24, 1940, and is buried in Nab Wood Cemetery. May died in 1958.

Most Bradford-born portrait artists moved away to find commissions elsewhere, particularly in London. But Fred stayed in the district and to my mind must rank as one of the most successful past Bradford artists - all the more remarkable given the circumstances of his early life.

* Colin Neville profiles Bradford artists past and present at notjusthockney.info