Exhibition of ‘forgotten’ rail artist’s work opens in his home town of Sheffield
A MAJOR exhibition of half a century of works by Sheffield artist Kenneth Steel, who produced many posters to promote rail travel in the 1950s, has been opened.
The exhibition, called Places in Time, at Sheffield’s Weston Park Museum, features more than 100 of Steel’s paintings and drawings, and is the first time that so many of his works have been displayed together.
Steel was born in 1906 and tutored by renowned Sheffield landscape artist Stanley Royle.
In 1936, he became the youngest artist to be elected to the Royal Society of British Artists, after which he had solo exhibitions in London and Dublin.
In December 1940, his mother and pregnant wife were killed in the Sheffield Blitz, and the bombing destroyed much of his studio work.
He was often commissioned to produce architectural sketches, but his watercolour posters for British seaside resorts and other rail-served destinations in the post-World War Two era are best known.
Steel died of lung cancer in 1970, aged 63.
His biographer, Edward Yardley, who co-curated the exhibition, said that he remained largely unknown to the general public.
The exhibition runs until May 2.