Art out of the attic

By 16, Foster had won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Despite being one of its youngest students he taught there too, as well as developing skills beyond an easel that led him into sculpture, architecture, stained glass design, and woodcarving.

There's no suggestion that the printer's son was among the geniuses who have strewn the art world down the centuries. But his legacy in what he produced and shared with others, and perhaps a greater potential left unfulfilled by a freak accident, tell an extraordinary story.

It would have remained largely untold outside the family but for the research of his grandson, prompted by discoveries in the attic of a semi-detached house in Holyoake Avenue, Bingley. They represented some of Foster's eclectic output and had lain untouched, covered in soot and dust, for more than 70 years.

Now 15 examples of his work – watercolours depicting scenes from the surrounding area, some from a century ago – are being shown publicly for the first time in his home town. The exhibition, subtitled "an overdue appreciation", is at the Bingley Gallery, a few hundred yards from the cottage where he grew up and the suburban villa he designed for his own family, and which indirectly cut short his life in bizarre circumstances.

It also pays tribute to the efforts of David Foster who began investigating his grandfather's life and times after his finds in the attic. Searches led him to numerous archives around the country, and to Dentdale where he rummaged among the personal papers and records kept by Walter's daughter-in-law, Doris Foster, who has her 100th birthday this year.

The strands of the story begin with events in a boy's life which are inconceivable today. Walter attended the junior section of Bingley Grammar School. His talent for art, as well as a gift for communicating the subject, were such that he never made it to the senior school. He was poached by an art master who taught there and offered him the job as his assistant at Bingley School of Art. Walter was not yet a teenager when he began teaching.

He was equally keen to be educated himself and gained a place at the RCA in London. There he was influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement whose leading lights were, in part, reacting against the machine-made production of the Industrial Revolution and influenced everything from architecture and interior design, to furniture and the presentation of books and gardens.

Foster also won a sketching scholarship which took him to Italy for six months. In hindsight he might have robbed himself of far greater opportunities by returning to Yorkshire, at first to be an art teacher in the Halifax area and then, at 24, head of the school in Bingley where he'd been on the staff as a boy.

During the First World War he served in the Royal Navy but continued to paint and also studied textile design before reviving an ailing art college in Stockport. Then the Aire Valley called him back and he was appointed head of the Shipley School of Art. He was also developing his own work and painting around Haworth.

He had a London agent and sold some pictures. But in 1929 he died after falling from a window at the house in Holyoake Avenue while talking to his brother. He was 42.

Such was the family's grief his art was all but erased. Four or five paintings were kept on the walls but most items were banished to the attic.

His grandson was 50 before he ventured up a ladder and the scene amazed him. He found about 80 watercolours and a few oils, unframed canvasses, design experiments with stained glass, etchings, drawings, a sketchbook and other works. As well as scenes from the moors and the Aire and Worth valleys there were pictures of the Yorkshire coast. Some will form an exhibition being held in Staithes at Easter.

David Foster has had all the works photographed and in some cases restored. His mission now is to promote one of the most interesting but overlooked artistic figures of his generation, neglected in large part because of the family's reaction to his premature death.

The fact that so little of Walter's work has been seen for decades makes it hard to judge its value, but in any case for his grandson that is irrelevant. He says that during his lifetime no Foster originals will be sold.

"After so much research into the man and his work I feel personally responsible for it, that it's part of our family and belongs with us," said David, a music publisher who lives in Leeds.

"We are still finding out about him. His life and what he did is the thrill of all this for me – not what his pictures might be worth but the pleasure they can give those who see them in exhibitions and the story behind them. As an artist he loved landscapes, the seasons and working outside in all weathers. His use of colour, observation and draughtsmanship put him at the forefront. You won't find chocolate boxy thatched cottages here.

"Maybe as a young man he made career moves which in hindsight held him back and restricted his talent. Who knows what he could have done if he'd worked in London or abroad. As it was he died relatively young before his full potential was fulfilled.

"But his creativity went far beyond what he painted. For a time he was at the centre of the artistic media of his day in many of its forms. He also loved explaining art and we have uncovered letters and other documents describing his influence on others. To have been recruited as a 12-year-old to teach seems utterly remarkable today. My hope is that he can be as appreciated as much now as he was in his lifetime."

The Walter Foster Exhibition is at the Bingley Gallery, 29a Park Road, 01274 552143. Thursday and Friday noon-6pm, Saturday and Sunday 10-5pm. Until February 28.

An exhibition of his work is being held at Staithes Memorial Village Hall, April 2-5.