Lise Lotte Bayer, born in April 1931, was the daughter of artist and teacher, Richard Bayer. Like her father, Lise also became an artist and art teacher. She was educated at Bradford Grammar School, then studied Fine Art at Reading University, gaining a first class honours degree in 1953. She worked with a range of art media, including oil and watercolour painting, drawing, photography, modelling and embroidery.
Donkeys.
Her work was widely exhibited in group shows both in the Yorkshire region and on one occasion at the 1956 226th exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists in London. She had also showed her work in London in 1953 at the Royal Society of British Artists ‘Young Contemporaries’ exhibition. She also exhibited paintings with the Royal Academy and her photographic work with the Royal Photographic Society.
In Yorkshire her artwork was shown with Bradford Arts Club (1949 & 1950), of which she was a member, and at exhibitions at Bradford Cartwright Hall (1949 & 1951), Yorkshire Artists’ exhibition in Leeds (1949 & 1955), Young Artists’ Exhibition in Halifax (1948).
Barbara Bayer, and Lise’s father Richard
She also had solo shows of her artwork in 1953 and again in 1955 at the Civic Playhouse in Bradford and the Shipley Institute of Further Education (Later, renamed Shipley College) in 1955.
Lise trained as an art teacher following her graduation in 1953 and in the late 1950s moved to York. A former pupil, James Bogie, remembers her:
She taught at Barlby County secondary school where I was a pupil. She was there, at least from 1970, perhaps longer. She was still there when I left. I had no belief that I was any good at art. Lise encouraged me to take Art after a homework that required me to look at myself in the back of a spoon and draw it. For once I tried, as the idea intrigued me.
Lise suffered from polio and died in 1974, at Harrogate, aged 42.
(With thanks for the biographical detail and images supplied by Paul Bayer and his family, and for research help by Colin Coates of the Saltaire Village website.)