THE family of a renowned local artist were thrilled to find one her paintings in a charity shop in Ross-on-Wye.

Sarah Williams, the granddaughter of Peggy Laws was in the St Michael’s Hospice charity shop in Gloucester Road when her mother Suzie was paying for a few items they had already bought, when they noticed a painting on the wall featuring three flowers that had been painted by Peggy some 20 years ago.

Sarah said that her grandmother had died in 2019, and the discovery had her in tears in the shop, and said that she immediately made a decision that the painting was coming home with her.

Both women told the charity shop about their connection with the painting and the store offered them a discount. Sarah said: “It was being sold at £20 and that’s what they should have. The painting is back home with us now and will stay with me forever. All three of those exact plants still grow in our garden.

“The most eerie part of all this is that just a few hours earlier, we’d been talking about my grandmother.”

Suzie, Peggy’s daughter, said that somebody must have loved and cherished the painting and recognised its value, because the watercolours have not faded over time.

Suzie explained that Peggy had been born in Nainital in India in 1922 and was sent to boarding school in England at the age of eight and added: “She was being brought up by her own grandmothers in India when she returned home on school holidays. She started painting out of boredom during one vacation, after she received a postcard and began copying it.

“She soon learnt how to sketch and paint and from the age of 12 she was painting people’s pets and when she became a teenager, selling the paintings in Kashmir.

But when Peggy married her husband Stracey, her father’s major in the Indian army, at the age of 20, her life as a painter ceased. The couple moved to various farms in England before settling in Llansteffan, Carmarthenshire and became a farm labourer’s wife.

Peggy didn’t start painting again until 1960 when she captured the sea, the castle and the local woodland. Her husband became a priest and moved to Longlevens and later Aston Ingham in 1970 when she became a prolific painter.

Peggy painted a lot of scenes that she feared would be lost, like the old railway and was fascinated about the local history of Aston Ingham and The Lea, where she moved to in 1979.

Peggy sold a lot of paintings and gave a lot away as well. Her pictures are on display at the chiropodist and in a sweet shop on the High Street in Coleford.However, she did keep a photographic record of all her work.

Suzie said: “She always credits John Petts, a Welsh sculpturist, who told her to do one piece of art every day, no matter how small. She stuck with that and we’ve got all her little sketch books.

“She loved painting reflections, and she could often be found at various ponds in the Forrest of Dean. She started the Lea Art Group and helped it became what it is today.”

In Peggy’s later years she had a summer house in the back garden, which she called Lazy Lands, in tribute to her home back in India.

“She just loved being in the garden, painting the flowers around her and the grandchildren,” Suzie said.

“Most of the paintings Peggy created were flowers from the garden in The Lea. The paintings reflected her life, and the paintings reflected her garden.”