Fred Yates: The reclusive artist who never recovered from his twin brother's wartime death

When young Fred peered out of window one morning and spotted an artist wearing corduroy trousers, he dashed straight out to buy a pair to be like him.

His insurance agent father was not amused, took one look at his son and ordered him from the room with the words: "Have we got a workman in the house??

At first, Fred towed the line, following his father into the family insurance business. Then, with the Second World War at its height, he was drafted into the Grenadier Guards, helping Allied troops liberate Brussels but also learning of the death of his twin brother in the failed attempt to capture the bridge at Arnhem in September, 1944. It was a loss from which he would never fully recover.

After being demobbed and anxious to escape what he later described as "the tightness, discipline and torture of my childhood" he became an art teacher.

It was not until he was nearly 50 that he was confident enough to paint full-time, mixing sophistication with naivety to produce unmistakable stylised figures. "A happy Lowry", some critics called him.

His paintings are marked by lush, vibrant colours, featuring Victorian aunts, housewives pushing prams, rainy seaside days under umbrellas and women enjoying the performance of a male stripper preserving his modesty with a white hat in the back room of a Northern pub.

Even the cook has dashed in from the kitchen to catch the performance, still clasping a pan of eggs, in "Private Function", which surfaces at the Northern Antiques Fair to be held at Tennants from September 26-29. It is offered by Rastall Art at £4,950.

Fred Yates (1922-2008) was born in Urmston, Greater Manchester, and his bold, expressive pictures, characterised by thick paint, often squeezed straight from the tube but underpinned by a complete grasp of drawing, colour and composition, are attracting a growing band of collectors nowadays.

After finally giving up teaching in 1969, he supported himself at first by mowing lawns and doing odd jobs. He sat in Cornish harbours, painting the working boats and selling the pictures to owners for £10 each before reaching maturity as an artist at a time when most people were considering retirement.

Increasingly nomadic, Fred recorded a fading England: the mills and factories of Manchester, working-class holidays at the seaside, Punch and Judy shows, dancing girls, music halls, street parties, circuses, Cornish fishermen, French rural scenes.

The loss of his twin brother in the war had a profound effect on Fred, who thereafter adopted a reclusive, almost spartan lifestyle - one driven entirely by his art.

He once confided: "It is the man in the street that I'm after, whom I feel closest to, with whom I want to make friends and enter into confidence and connivance, and he is the one I want to please and enchant by means of my work".

In his final years Fred made repeated efforts to return to England from France, eventually finding a small house in Frome, Somerset.

It was on his journey to complete on the purchase that he fell and suffered a heart attack. He died on July 7, 2008 and is buried in the graveyard at Marazion, Cornwall, overlooking St Michael's Mount, a subject he often painted.

Elsewhere at the Northern Antiques Fair, Yorkshire views include watercolours such as "The Old Rectory, Hinderwell, near Whitby, North Yorkshire" by Frederick William Jackson (1859-1918) at £1,950; "Tate Hill Pier and the East Cliff Whitby" by Rowland Henry Hill (1873-1952), dated 1930, also £1,950; "A fisherwoman at Whitby Harbour" by Julian E Drummond (1824-1906) at £950; "River Esk, North Yorkshire" by Harold Sutton Palmer (1854-1933) at £3,750; and an oil of Whitby Harbour by James Watson (1851-1936) at £3,250.

Also on offer, at £495, is a watercolour, "Royal Parade with Crown Hotel, Harrogate" by Angus Rands (1932-1985), who was born in the Yorkshire village of Menston and later lived in Harrogate. He specialised in painting town and landscape scenes, particularly of the Dales and Wolds.

Another by Rowland Hill, a 1910 watercolour "Fountains Abbey" (£1,250). The abbey was founded in 1132 by 13 Benedictine monks from St Mary's in York who had grown tired of the extravagant and rowdy way that the monks lived there and so they escaped, seeking to live a devout and simple lifestyle elsewhere.