Paintings could fetch £25,000 each
Date published: 16 March 2009
Two of the earliest paintings by Oldham artist Helen Bradley, which in the late 1960s may have cost less than £2,000 each, are now expected to fetch up to £25,000 each at an auction later this month.
The pictures — nostalgic glimpses of Bradley’s childhood in Oldham in the early 1900s — are titled “On Friday Afternoon We Visited Great Aunt Jane” and “‘Oh Jane’, said Miss Carter (Who Wore Pink)”.
Both were painted in 1968, three years after Lees-born Bradley took up painting at the age of 65 to show her grandchildren what life was like in the north in the Edwardian era.
The pictures were exhibited in Los Angeles in 1969 and will now be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London on March 25.
Both pictures are signed, dated and captioned and feature Bradley’s trademark fly motif, which she adopted because her real name was Nellie and she was affectionately known to her family as Nellie Bly.
Bradley, born on November 20, 1900, was named Nellie because her father, Frederick Layfield, who supplied hardware items to shops in Oldham, was a fan of the Australian opera singer Dame Nellie Melba.
But Nellie hated the name so much that she was determined to change it. Eventually, the money she earned from her art enabled her to change it by deed poll from Nellie to Helen in 1974 when she was in her early 70s.
The artist was 11 when she moved from Lees to Frederick Street, Oldham, and was educated at Clarksfield School.
In the early 1970s, some of her best pictures sold for up to £2,000.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of her death at the age of 78 in July, 1979, and since then the value of her work has steadily soared.
The current world record for a Bradley picture is £94,100, paid at Christie’s in London in 2007, for “Our First Morning In Blackpool”.
When Bradley died, she left more than £222,000 — enough to buy 11 decent houses in Oldham at 1979 prices.
Gallery Oldham owns two oil paintings by Helen Bradley —“A Special Treat” and “Fire On Union Street”.
