The troubled genius who painted soul of a town on cusp of change

Although he died in Preston over a century ago living in lodgings and apparently penniless the artist Edwin Beattie left the town a priceless legacy

- writes Keith Johnson.

Edwin Robert Beattie did not receive so much appreciation in his lifetime, but certainly his sketches and watercolour paintings are appreciated these days.

A notice appeared in the Lancashire Daily Post in early February 1917 announcing Beattie's sudden death, aged 72, at 23 Heatley Street in the following manner: "He was an artist whose sketches of old Preston-many of which have been reproduced in the Preston Guardian - are so well known. Mr. Beattie was the eldest son of Robert Beattie, a Preston portrait painter who flourished in Preston in the early part of the nineteenth century and died in March 1875. Edwin was born in June 1845, but was practically brought up in Southport. After a varied career in this country and Canada he settled down in Lancashire as a landscape artist, and achieved considerable success with his pen and ink and water colour sketches of old historic buildings, manor houses, churches etc. He and his brother Frederick produced many pictures of old Liverpool and Southport, which are of considerable artistic as well as topographical interest."

That short obituary notice giving little indication of the work that we would appreciate so much over a century later. He had died in a back street attic of a three-storey dwelling owned by Preston steeplejack George Reed, and at the time of his demise was described as a lonely, penniless, disenchanted alcoholic.