The Beverley Arms: The historic pub that motivated one of Yorkshire's great artists

The pipe-smoking artist, armed with his easel and paints, would nip in for a pint on many an evening as it was close to his home and he was friends with the owners, the Morleys.

He was such a familiar figure in the old hostelry - which dates back to at least 1686 and was originally known as The Blue Bell - that Elwell Bar was named in his honour.

But companionship and beer were not the only attractions for the artist....servants and fellow customers provided him with inspiration for many of his most accomplished and vivid depictions of Yorkshire life.

Let's start at the beginning.

Elwell (1870-1958) was born in St Mary's Cottage, Beverley, youngest son of cabinetmaker and woodcarver James Elwell , who was twice Mayor of Beverley, and his wife Annie.

He studied art in Lincoln and at leading schools in Antwerp and Paris before returning to London. He fell on hard times there, became despondent at his lack of success and suffered a nervous breakdown.

His father rushed down to support Fred and eventually convinced him to return home to Beverley. He found success in his home county, exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1895 and in 1903 married fellow artist Mary (1874-1952), whose secure financial position enabled Fred to travel abroad to paint continental landscapes.

But Yorkshire - and his home town in particular - was his passion and The Beverley Arms provided him with a rich array of subject matter. Pot Boy (1903), depicting a jaunty young boy polishing just-washed copper and brass amid the disorder of the inn's scullery, is an early example.

Other later works include The Beverley Arms Kitchen (1919), with a maid plucking a chicken; Preparations With Fish; maids and cook taking a break in An Inn Kitchen: Elevenses (1940); staff crowded around the kitchen table, with the butler at the head, in The Midday Meal (1922); and others depicting maids shelling peas, polishing pans and gazing at pigeons - all of which are illustrated in Fred Elwell RA - A Life in Art, a beautifully produced biography by Wendy Loncaster and Malcolm Shields.

Now we turn to another Elwell masterwork featuring, it seems, a member of staff at the hostelry.

The untitled oil showing a laundry room centres on one young woman in a red blouse or pullover and a dark apron, elbow on the table, staring pensively upwards, surfaced at Beverley auctioneers Hawleys to realise £2,685.

It was not only staff that caught the eye of the prolific Elwell, who was still painting a fortnight before his death at 87.

It was customers, too - and one was 28 year old Muriel Cox, a cook at Beverley Westwood Hospital who used to pop into The Beverley Arms on her way home. In 1943 he captured her, with a somewhat challenging expression, in In a Bar, sitting on "her stool", cigarette in hand and gin and tonic beside her - an Elwell classic and one which appeared at the Royal Academy later that year.

Muriel was a favourite model of Elwell's and believed to be the lady who posed for him in the self-explanatory Seated Nude in Studio (1935).

Elwell, who produced more than 500 paintings in his lifetime, was always busy around the Beverley area, painting the shops of a woodcarver, wheelwright, a French polisher and the town's last pipemaker, John Goforth, along with the police court, the Beverley band and locals at another Beverley inn, the Rose and Crown.

He painted, too, as well as portraits of his own family (including niece Florence, then 12) and staff and local dignitaries including George Monkman, the mace bearer.

He also painted national figures, including the Queen Mother's parents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore at Glamis on their golden wedding anniversary in 1931; Sir Winston Churchill's wartime visit to Hull in 1941; the Royal Academy Selection Committee and Hanging Committee (1938); and Sir Alexander and Lady Macdonald of the Isles at Thorpe Hall in the East Riding.

A particular favourite, and one I featured in these pages several years ago when it was offered by Sutcliffe Galleries of Harrogate at £35,000, is The Last Purchase, depicting Elwell's elderly antiques dealer father James, surrounded by an auction lot of ceramics, immersing himself in the task of repairing a vase.

The original oil was first entitled The New Purchase - but Elwell touchingly changed it to The Last Purchase following the death of his father.

*The historic coaching inn, opposite St Mary's Church, was renamed The Beverley Arms in 1794 by local mason William Middleton. After struggling earlier this century, it is thriving once more.