ARTIST Robin Rae, 82, from Bradpole, near Bridport, has been reunited with a picture he painted and sold in 1947 when he was a 19-year-old art student at Ealing College of Art.

The painting, Wiltshire White Horse, was bought by a Mr Quormby, the Inspector of Art Schools. Rae did not expect ever to see it again. But this year it was handed in to a charity shop in Clifton, Bristol, by an anonymous donor.

Staff at the shop realised it was an exceptional painting and started researching Robin Rae on the internet. Making contact with Sladers Yard, the art gallery that represents Robin Rae, they brought it over to West Bay where it is now offered for sale on behalf of Mind, the mental health charity.

Sixty-four years later Robin Rae is still painting and a solo show of his recent work is in the Rope Gallery at Sladers Yard alongside the Wiltshire White Horse until July 3.

Looking at the painting, Robin said: “I used to put all my favourite things into my pictures. I had just discovered Eric Ravilious at the time.”

The painting has a wonderfully 1930s style, as did all Rae’s work in that brief and very successful period.

Rae was exceptionally successful in his early career. He exhibited at London’s Royal Academy in Young Contemporaries in 1946 when he was 18.

After Ealing School of Art he went to the Royal College of Art where his teachers included some of the finest artists of the time, Francis Bacon, John Nash, Rodrigo Moynihan and Edward Bawden. By the time he was 21 he had had two successful solo shows at the Little Gallery in Piccadilly, London.