The Enid Blyton Society

Portrait of Enid Blyton - private commission

Commissioned by the Enid Blyton Company (1997) this painting, 1780 x 1220 mm, illustrates the rich childhood world of Enid Blyton. I had the great pleasure of working closely with the author's delightful eldest daughter, Gillian Baverstock, the owner.

bavers wrote:
I don't know unfortunately where the statue is but I can confirm that my mother still had it at her death. She was planning on putting it in the new garden she was going to create at her new, much smaller property. Unfortunately, the executors of her estate, with no consultation, sold the statue in Ilkley, in a sale with no attribution in 2009/2010, certainly prior to the sale of the other Blyton memorabilia in September 2010. Someone has a gem which presumably they are unaware of.

Had I known of the sale I would have tried to buy it, if only because of he memories it held for me. Not just the memories of it at Green Hedges, where it used to sit near a pond with the biggest goldfish I, aged under 8, had ever seen. But also because once it had moved to Yorkshire after Enid's death, my siblings and I knocked it off its plinth and decapitated it. I think my mother was angrier than I have ever seen her. I remember being so mortified and upset that I tore her Christmas card into bits because she quite clearly no longer loved me, as the card had assured me she did.

The statue was carefully mended and sat near two ponds, at Low Hall and Ty Bryn, until it was secured in the garage at her last house prior to a garden and pond being created.

I fortunately have the memory of it in the large Tom Adams biographical portrait which is hung in my hall, but it is not the same as the original.

Bavers

Robert Houghton wrote:

Perhaps I should get some prints made and I will pay people £5 to take them off my hands, LOL!

Robert Houghton wrote:Thank you! When I drew the second one, I was basing it on the original 'Blyton Landscape' painting, which I think is amazingly good!