ARTIST Robin Rae has been reunited with a painting he sold 64 years ago when he was a young art student.

The 82-year-old pensioner from Bradpole set eyes on Wiltshire White Horse after it turned up at a charity shop in Bristol.

Now it is on show along with his recent work in the Rope Gallery at Sladers Yard until July 3 and is up for sale on behalf of Mind, the mental health charity.

Mr Rae said about the painting: “I used to put all my favourite things into my pictures. I had just discovered Eric Ravilious at the time.”

Mr Rae sold the picture in 1947 when he was a 19-year-old art student at Ealing College of Art.

It was bought by a Mr Quormby, the Inspector of Art Schools.

Earlier this year it was handed into a charity shop in Clifton, Bristol, by an anonymous donor. Staff at the shop realised its worth and started researching Mr Rae on the internet. They made contact with Sladers Yard, the art gallery that represents Robin Rae, and brought it over to West Bay.

Mr Rae is still painting at 82 and has enjoyed a successful career.

He exhibited at London’s Royal Academy in Young Contemporaries in 1946 when he was 18. After Ealing School of Art he went to the Royal College of Art where his teachers included some of the finest artists of the time, Francis Bacon, John Nash, Rodrigo Moynihan and Edward Bawden.

By the time he was 21 he had had two successful solo shows at the Little Gallery in Piccadilly, London.

When he left art school Mr Rae spent time travelling and working in factories painting working-class life. He taught etching at Edinburgh School of Art and three-dimensional design at Liverpool College of Art. He also made abstract three-dimensional painted constructions. The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool holds work from this period. In 1970 he retired from the art world to Bridport where he made sculpture and ran a screen printing dress design business with his wife, Kate.

He only resumed painting again at the age of 59 years old.

* Robin Rae: Memory, Imagination and Dream is at the Rope Gallery, Sladers Yard until July 3. Entry is free.