Beer In Art #41: Dudley Pout’s Barley & Beer Time

Today painting is entitled Barley and Beer Time and was created by Dudley Pout.

Apparently Pout was primarily an illustrator comic artist who was most well-known for his movie poster artist. He was born on a farm and began doing oil paintings of farm scenes after retiring and moving back to the same type of farm he grew up on. There’s not to much information I could find about him, except on a blog about British comics called Bear Alley, who fills in some biographical detail.

Edward Dudley Pout was born at Frog Island Farm, Herne, Kent, on 24 November 1908, the 2,000 acre farming estate being owned jointly by Pout’s father and his four brothers. The Pout family moved to various farms, and at the age of 8, young Dudley attended the village school at Swalecliffe where his headmistress recognised his drawing ability and arranged for an interview with the principal of Margate School of Art. He was awarded a full-time Art Scholarship, and at the age of 13 became their youngest ever student.
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After the War, Pout continued to work as a freelance commercial artist, and [from the 1950s through 1962, he drew comic books until], mindful of the decline in sales and concern for his wife’s poor health, was forced to leave comic strips behind.

Pout moved back to Kent and resumed farming, specialising in cross-breeding cattle. He retired in 1973 to a small house in Biddenden, Kent, where he painted in oils for pleasure, although he also produced a series of ‘Farming in Bygone Days’ paintings for a postcard company. Pout lived at Gribble Bridge Lane Farm, Biddenden, Ashford, Kent, where he died on December 12, 1991, aged 83.

So that suggests that Barley and Beer Time was most likely painted in the 1970s or 80s.

You can a peak at his comic book work at Bear Alley and more of his later oil paintings at the Bridgeman Art Gallery.