We have posts inspired by the Art School Project this week. John Beck and Matthew Cornford are exploring the history and legacies of the nation’s art schools, and examining "the vital role art schools have played, and continue to play, in the cultural and economic life of our towns and cities". At one time there were around 250 art schools in the UK and the project is organised by region. The sixth and most recent exhibition of their superb collection of photographs (plus other materials) of the art schools of the Midlands can be seen at Loughborough University until 28th June. This is the old Loughborough School of Art in the centre of town. 

Although Berner Street in Whitechapel where Rose and Basil lived, worked and helped to establish a synagogue and settlement, was renamed Henriques Street in their honour, there is still no blue plaque to mark Rose's contribution to this part of London. She remained active and involved all her life, still painting scenes of Jewish East End life well into the 1950s. This is The Clothes Sale, East London (1960, details here).

Rose Henriques served as a VAD in the First World War, and as an air-raid warden in the East End of London during the Second World war. She would have made an excellent official war artist with her on-the-spot depictions of wartime London. This is Enquiries, Hooper Street V1 Incident (1941, Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives), painted in a vivid reportage style.

Rose Henriques' wartime and philanthropic work is well-documented, but there is disappointingly little about her as an artist. We can see from her paintings such as Coronation in Challis Court (1937, Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives) that she worked quickly in various media. As Sara Ayad writes, her work shows  "attentiveness to amusing detail" and has a "lively, naïve charm, reflecting her own seemingly inexhaustible energy. At their best, her works are reminiscent of some of her near contemporaries such as Edward Ardizzone and Walter Sickert, who may have had an influence on her style".

Rose Henriques (1889-1972) is the subject of this week's posts. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Stoke Newington, London, she was a social worker and self-taught artist. She began painting in the 1930s whilst at the same time pursuing philanthropic work among the Jewish community in the East End together with her husband, Basil Henriques. She found the majority of her subjects in this part of London, including La toilette (1930, Museum of London) which depicts women doing their laundry in the St George's Jewish Settlement, set up by the Henriques.

Finally this week, we have Wigtown, which was designated as Scotland's National Book Town in 1998. For a small place it is, like Hay-on-Way, impressively energetic in supporting a wide range of book-related businesses including the annual autumn Festival. Shaun Bythell, owner of The Bookshop (above), wrote an account of his bookselling experiences in The Diary of a Bookseller and has done much to put Wigtown on the literary map.

Paju Book City, an hour's drive north of Seoul in South Korea, takes the concept of 'book town' to a totally new level. There are 900-plus book-related businesses located here - often in elegant, modern architecture - in the hub of South Korea's publishing industry. There are two literary festivals a year, and the Book City is full of readers every weekend. This is the 'Forest of Wisdom', a library of books donated by  publishers in Paju which is open to the public.