Sylvia Frances Forster

(Liverpool 1903 – 1993)

Still Life with fruit, wine and lute, c.1948-1952  *SOLD*

oil on board

in a period frame

Sylvia was born in Mayhull, Liverpool, and went to Garnets School and Berkhamsted School. She took up painting as a young woman, inspired by the Paris Avant-Garde, studying at Liverpool College of Art, where she became fascinated by Cubism and the work of Georges Bracques. During this time she exhibited at the Liverpool Academy, the Cumbrian Academy, RBA, ROI and the Walker Art Gallery.

In the 1920s she met her future husband, Ralph Forster, who had survived WWI, fighting with the Liverpool Scottish and then the Royal Field Artillery. The couple married in 1929 in Liverpool and ‘hit the headlines’ in the Liverpool Echo by setting off to honeymoon in Switzerland and Italy by air (very unusual at that time). The headlines read ‘From Altar to Aeroplane’. They also made the London Evening Express and the Daily Express the following day.

Marriage and motherhood put her career on hold. Sylvia brought up their son on her own during the war years (when her husband was stationed in India), and was an ambulance driver on a part-time voluntary basis. She often manned an ambulance for the bomb disposal squad.

During the post-war years Sylvia was better able to develop her life-long interest in art. She took up pottery and made many small pieces in her own kiln, but painting was her passion. She exhibited various paintings at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions in the 1960s, and became a member of the Heswall Artists’ Association, ultimately becoming their chairwoman.