When the Hammersmith & Shepherds Bush Gazette and Post interviewed George Puckey in 1961 they reported how the 74 year old pensioner had developed a profitable hobby in his retirement.
Any self-respecting local art enthusiast would be quick to point out that George had honed his talent here in Swindon where we have a clutch of his work, once available to view in the Swindon Museum and Art Gallery.
George was born in Plymouth in 1888, the son of Charles and Sarah Puckey. The family had moved to Swindon by 1901 when they lived at 2 John Street Terrace where Charles worked as a Butcher journeyman. By 1911 23 year old George was working as a van driver for a house furnishing firm; his 16 year old brother Frederick was a general labourer in the GWR Works.
George’s work is hung Down Under
A 74 year old Acton man has found a novel way of supplementing his old age pension. He is Mr. George Puckey, of Northfield-road, North Acton, and since he retired eight years ago he has been painting pictures.
As Mr Puckey’s fame as a painter spread, so more and more orders for his colourful pictures, most of them of Kew Garden scenes, have rolled in.
Two of them are the proud possessions of an Australian family. They were bought by an Acton shopkeeper who sent them to her Australian relatives.
Exhibition
Mr Puckey, an Acton resident for 30 years and a former packer for the Metal Box Co., has just reached a proud highlight in his painting career.
He told the Gazette last week that he has had a picture accepted for the Middlesex County old people’s handiwork exhibition, to be held at Wembley Town Hall.
The picture is of Queen’s Cottage, in Kew Gardens.
Mr Puckey started painting when a young man living at Swindon. “I attended the Swindon College of Art but since then I have done very little painting. It was only when I retired that I seemed to find the time.
But I was very successful with my pictures at Swindon and a number of them of interest to local historians were bought by the Swindon Museum.”
Mr Puckey’s views on modern art? “It is awful, terrible, most of it,” he said.
Gazette and Post, Thursday, September 28, 1961.
George’s younger brother Frederick died in 1926. He is buried in Radnor Street Cemetery in grave plot C3760 where he lies alone.
The family later moved to Acton, Middlesex, where George remained for the rest of his life. He died in 1963, a couple of years after the newspaper article appeared in the local press.