A trip to Beverley in East Yorkshire has inspired us in many ways. It is a beautiful small market town with not only a spectacular Minster but also a stunning late medieval parish church. In 2022, St Mary's installed on the exterior nine stone carvings of heads of "women of influence" including aviator Amy Johnson (above, before installation) who grew up in nearby Hull, and Mary Wollstonecraft who spent part of her childhood in Beverley.

Valerie Finnis created a huge library of plant portraits, having learned about photography in the mid-1950s from Wilhelm Schacht, the Curator of the Munich Botanical Garden. He gave her a second-hand Rolleiflex camera, which she used for decades. Today, she is also remembered for her portraits of contemporary gardeners, often dressed in grand or eccentric outfits. Subjects included Margery Fish, Vita Sackville-West, Rhoda, Lady Birley, and Nancy Lancaster (above).

Valerie Finnis trained as a gardener at the Waterperry School of Horticulture for Ladies, and stayed on to teach until her marriage. Waterperry was founded in 1932 by Beatrix Havergal (1901-80), photographed here by Valerie Finnis. Many who trained there went on to garden professionally, including Pamela Schwerdt, the influential joint head gardener at Sissinghurst from 1959 until 1990.

After the Chelsea Flower Show last week, our thoughts turn to gardening and gardeners. Valerie Finnis (1924-2006) was a horticulturalist and photographer who gardened with and in style, as this photograph (1993, NPG) shows. She became Lady Montagu Douglas Scott when she married David Scott (1887-1986), and within one hour of the wedding, they were weeding their garden.

Helen Clapcott (b 1952) has worked almost exclusively in tempera for decades. She has been painting images of Stockport for more than fifty years, returning to document the viaduct, the old hat and paper mills, and the ever-changing industrial landscape and cycles of demolition and redevelopment. She chose unfashionable tempera because it suited her style best and works in a limited palette, with her large pieces taking months to paint. This is Tiviot Dale Through The Valley (2010); Stockport War Memorial Art Gallery has several of her paintings, and a monograph to coincide with a major exhibition there was published in 2024.

Like Joseph Southall, Margaret Gere (1878-1965) was a member of the exceptionally talented and prolific Birmingham Group. She was known for her tempera paintings, including this strong and characterful portrait, Mrs Alfred Thornton (1916, Manchester Art Gallery).

Joseph Southall (1861-1944) was a member of the multi-talented Birmingham Group  and a leading figure in the Tempera Revival. Several of his tempera paintings are  in the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. They often include well-dressed women wearing beautifully detailed garments - the very fine brushes used with tempera enable this. Southall also painted this carefully and sympathetically observed The Food Queue (undated, Gallery Oldham) which shows the impact of wartime rationing.