HOW I FOUND DAD'S LONG-LOST PAINTING

Son's mission to track down late artist's works

- By WESLEY HOLMES

AN impressionist painting of a summer's day on New Brighton beach was feared lost - before being rediscovered at Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery 75 years after it was purchased.

Cafe Scene, by Birkenhead artist Geoff Yeomans, was bought by the art gallery in the 1950s, but has remained hidden in the museum’s storage area in recent years.

It was rediscovered last year by Geoff’s son Jason, after he set out to track down his father’s artistic legacy. Jason said: “He had a whole series of pictures in the 1950s from when he was an art student in Liverpool, and they're impressionistic scenes of Merseyside. Some are in the Williamson gallery in Birkenhead. There's a beautiful one in Runcorn Town Hall which is called the Three Bridges, which I've seen a couple of times.

“I have some of his early works because I inherited them. Last year I got in touch with the curator of the Walker Art Gallery and we went down to see this Cafe Scene.”

Geoff Yeomans grew up in Birkenhead and attended the Liverpool College of Art, where John Lennon famously met his first wife Cynthia Powell and friend Stuart Sutcliffe, the original bass guitarist of The Beatles. Geoff also studied at the Laird School of Art in his home town.