PAINTINGS recollecting Liverpool’s bohemian heyday will be featured on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow this weekend.
When the show came to St George’s Hall in November, trainee solicitor Claire Currie thought it time to find out a bit more about a collection of works with intriguing family ties.
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Ms Currie and her parents set about finding nine paintings, all by the artist Austin Davies, which have been valued at more than £10,000.
Two of the paintings Ms Currie took to the roadshow will be featured on Sunday night.
They were all the work of Austin Davies, ex-husband of Liverpool novelist Dame Beryl Bainbridge, dating back to the 1960s when the couple frequented a members’ dining club, in Hope Street, owned by Ms Currie’s great aunt and uncle, Dorothy and Gordon Green.
The 23 Club, now a Mexican restaurant, was frequented by the city’s up-and-coming musicians and artists.
Ms Currie, 31, a trainee at Kirwans Solicitors, said: “We always thought the paintings would be worth something, and of course you always hope they’re going to be worth a fortune, but it was just out of curiosity really.� The two paintings shown on the programme, one of which is certainly a portrait of Bainbridge, were valued at £800 and in excess of £1,000.
Ms Currie said: “My great aunt and uncle owned a members’ dining club on Hope Street in the 1960s.
“My great uncle was a famous piano teacher and knew a lot of people in the arts, so the club would be filled with musicians and artists.
“They had a house on Hope Street where they would often take in art students
“One of the couples they took in was Beryl Bainbridge and Austin Davies, so they must have either given these paintings as a present, or sometimes that is just what people used to do out of gratitude.�
THE Antiques Roadshow from St George’s Hall is on BBC1 on Sunday, at 6.40pm