Mary Potter (1900-81) is now recognized as one of the foremost British women painters of her time. The elusive colours, the fugitive shapes and textures in her pictures convey the ephemeral quality of the air and light of the spare coastal landscape around Aldeburgh. From the Beckenham School of Art and the Slade (which she left in 1921 having collected seven prizes), through her early involvement with the New English Art Club and the Seven and Five, this book traces her Continental wanderings and marriage to Stephen Potter in the 1920s, life in Chiswick in the 1930s, the war years and the burgeoning of her career after the move to Suffolk. Mary Potter did not align herself with any group or movement: she worked independently and unremittingly throughout her long life, attracting many loyal admirers of her work. Julian Potter's text carefully weaves together the story of her life and career, drawing on his own memories, talks with many of his mother's surviving friends, and the unpublished diaries of his father, Stephen Potter.