This atmospheric collection of works are by the local West Ham artist Fred Mears (b.1900). Mears was born in Plaistow in 1900, at a time when East London was at its most overcrowded and polluted. But Mears chose to paint the traces of the area's rural past, focusing on parks and gardens and farm buildings, in a rustic palette of greens and browns. His works record some of the local buildings that no longer exist or are much changed. Our collection also includes depictions at nearby Poplar, and at Stanford-le-Hope, further east along the Thames in Essex.
Little is known about Mears's life, but it is recorded that he was an art student at West Ham Municipal College. Newham Council has around 100 paintings by Fred Mears in its archive.
