A modest artist who eschewed the chance of fame and withdrew to the Norfok countryside is being celebrated in the principal King's Lynn festival exhibition, at the Fermoy Gallery.

By ALISON CROOSE

A modest artist who eschewed the chance of fame and withdrew to the Norfok countryside is being celebrated in the principal King's Lynn festival exhibition, at the Fermoy Gallery. Claughton Pellew is considered a minor master compared with his contemporaries at the Slade in the early years of the 20th century.

But his work is becoming better known, and more than 50 pictures on show at Lynn will undoubtedly win him many more admirers.

Pellew was so self-effacing he gave many of his paintings to his family and friends. Fortunately many are still in Norfolk and more than 50 have been loaned for a most interesting exhibition.

Pellew settled at Southrepps in North Norfolk where he captured the countryside in watercolour, oils and wood engravings. Upper Sheringham is the subject of one of the most attractive examples, and Trunch is featured on a front-page illustration Pellew designed for a Christmas edition of the Radio Times.

A Norfolk landscape from the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, a winter landscape by John Nash and two pictures by Pellew's wife, Kechie Tennent, are included in an exhibition of fascinating diversity.

t In the nearby Red Barn, Lynn painter and etcher Michael Johnson's first major exhibition includes some large works, particularly Viaduct, based on scenes he captured at Holburn in London where he contrasts an upstairs/downstairs view of society. There is humour in his observations of the welfare state with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown included in another large oil painting displayed amid an interesting array of etchings, prints and gouache.