PROPERTY FROM THE FAMILY OF ANTHONY BETTS (Lots 80 and 81) ANTHONY BETTS (1897-1980) Village view oil on canvas 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.) Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.  James Anthony Betts started his working life as a goods clerk on the Midland Railway at Skipton and ended it as Professor of Fine Art at Reading University. He attended night school and encouraged by his teacher, Eleanor (Nellie) Flexen, went on to study at Bradford (where he was a contemporary and friend of Henry Moore) and at the Royal College of Art (ditto with Eric Ravilious). There is some speculation that in the 1920s he may have been a protégé of William Rothenstein. After Sheffield and Kingston, he was appointed as lecturer and then the first Professor of Fine Art at Reading University. While there he built up a discipline of drawing and painting founded on the teachings of Sickert and practice of the Camden Town Group. He conferred honorary doctorates upon Walter Sickert (1938) – of whom he remained a great admirer and devotee – and upon Henry Moore (1959), his old colleague from Bradford. He was succeeded, on retirement in 1963, by the Euston Road School painter Claude Rogers. In retirement he devoted his time to painting and to tutoring the amateur members of the Bussock Mayne and Caversham Groups.