John Keith Byass (1920-2009), who lived at Bingley for over 50 years, started painting professionally, when, aged 60, he took early retirement from his job as a Transport Manager. He specialised in painting ships, locomotives and aircraft, which proved popular with collectors.
Keith – the name he was better known by – was born in Burton Fleming, near Bridlington. The Byass family were long established in the area, and his grand-parents had served as Mayor and Mayoress of Bridlington from 1932-34.
Keith had shown artistic talent from an early age and in his teens had started an art course at Hull College of Art. However, early in WW2, he volunteered initially for the Home Guard at Burton Fleming, then enlisted in the army and spent four years with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME) working on a wide range of light and heavy vehicles, including tanks.
He was initially stationed at Maidenhead, where he met his future wife, Cynthia, but was sent to India as a Warrant Officer in charge of a small light aid detachment with an infantry brigade. Whilst there he promised Cynthia he would take her to India see the Taj Mahal after the war. This was not possible, but to fulfil his early promise he later painted it for her, see below.
After the war Keith and Cynthia married and moved back to Bridlington, where they raised three children. In 1957 he was offered a job in Bingley, where he stayed for the rest of his life. At the age of 60 took early retirement from his work as as a Transport Manager; this opened a new opportunity for him.
His talent for painting had always been there, and retirement gave him the chance to develop and pursue his early interests in art. He said at that time: ” I hadn’t painted at all throughout my working life. But I think once you have something you don’t lose it.”
Haworth Church & Bronte Parsonage
Keith’s interest in transport, shaped by his time in REME and job as a Transport Manager, came to the fore in his choice of subject matter, although he painted other subjects, too, including portraits, landscapes, architectural scenes, and animal studies. He was a member of the World Ship Society – an international society devoted to maritime and naval history – and sold his ship paintings in postcard form through the Society. He used acrylic paints, but watered them down so they looked like watercolours on a canvas. Keith was also interested in photography and was a member of the Bingley Camera Club.
Steam boat ‘Aureol’ with tugboat in The Mersey at Liverpool, 1992.
‘The Titanic’ at the start of it’s ill-fated Maiden voyage.
Steam locomotive, Kings Cross
His wartime paintings were sometimes drawn from memory of incidents he witnessed. The scene below, for example titled, ‘This Narrow Escape’, was drawn from a 1940 memory when he was working on the family farm at Burton Fleming. There he witnessed a dogfight between Allied and German aircraft, and where bullets fired from the planes had struck the tractor that he had been driving.
Another 1940 memory resulted in the painting ‘Stand To / Stand Down’ (below). This depicts a gathering of the Home Guard at Burton Fleming church, when fears of enemy invasion were high along the East Coast; a Lysander spotter aircraft is seen on its landing approach to a nearby field. Keith, who had been promoted to an officer in the Home Guard by this time, is depicted in the painting, seated on a motorcycle, reporting to his senior officers
In 1980 Bingley Library hosted a solo display of his work (see photograph below) and Keith’s paintings can be found today in collections across Britain and worldwide, including in New Zealand and the USA.
(With thanks to Patsy Butler, daughter of Keith Byass for the biographical profile of her father and for permission to use most of the artwork images shown).