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Notes
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Julia Richardson (b.1947), was brought up on a remote hill farm on the fringes of the Lake District in Cumbria. After school, it was a four-mile walk home, where she was kept busy feeding hens and collecting their eggs, looking after sheep and calves and bringing in logs. She began working for her father full-time when she left school, but after two years grafting seven days a week with every third weekend off, she got a job as a weaver in Sedbergh. After three years she moved to Kendall to work in the K Shoes Factory, starting as a machinist and ending up as laster, putting soles onto leather uppers – the first woman to do the job. She still has shoes she made herself. They include a pair of boots she wears to go fell hunting, sometimes walking half a dozen miles a day with either the Ullswater or Blencathra Foxhounds.
It’s a mucky job, but I like it because in a way I’m back in the farming life, and I know most of my dairy farmers anyway. I store all the information on a laptop, so I had to go on a crash course in computers. I was the worst on the course when we started off, but within a couple of months I was the best. I had to do it, though, even though it’s not easy for someone over 50. After all, computers are the way the world’s going and everyone’s got to get to grips with them these days.'
Title
Julia Richardson (b.1947), Milk Tester
Date
2000
Medium
oil on board
Measurements
H 59 x W 49 cm
Accession number
468
Acquisition method
on loan from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Work type
Painting