A covid lockdown request from my parents.

Request: paint this shepherd from a black and white photograph in a book about rural life in the Lake District that dates from the 1960s. We later identified the shepherd as Isaac Cookson from Gillhead, Butterwick, also pictured in this Westmorland Gazette article from 1945.

The painting was to replace the "Ruth on a raft" painting, which had been sat in my parents’ kitchen for several weeks, so one aim was for it to be just as colourful. The glowing yellow background is a haystack, though I'm not certain what was in the background of the reference photo.