Sophie reunited with lighthouse painting

Ten-year-old Durrington Middle School student Sophie Silverton had not realised she had lost her watercolour painting until she was told by Jane Cresswell, the school’s deputy head teacher, that there was a picture of it in the paper.

Sophie said: “I’m very happy, all this just for my picture. I don’t know what to say. I need to be more careful.

“I’m going to give it to my nan who will frame it and put it with her special stuff.

“When I told my nan and she started crying. She told my dad, my mum and my auntie. She said you never know what you’re going to grow up to be you can treasure this.”

Sophie originally painted the picture, of a lighthouse by the coast, when she was eight, for a school art project. She was recently able to take it home when art teacher Kim Smithers-Brinded announced she was retiring and gave old work out for students to take home.

Seven-year-old Anna Chadwick found the painting while playing outside the Co-Op in Broadwater Street West.

She said she felt happy that Sophie had been reunited with the painting.

“We were waiting outside of the Co-Op with daddy while mum was in the shop.

“We were playing on the bars by the trolleys and I was going to climb on the trolley and I saw the painting.”

Anna added that she was a keen artist herself and particularly liked drawing flowers.

When Anna’s mum Angela became aware of the lost painting she contacted the Herald to see if we could help to locate the artist behind it.

She said: It’s lovely, a lot of effort went into it and it’s the thought that somebody had worked so hard on it.

“Anna would be upset if she lost something she had worked hard on. She was very excited to see her name was in the paper.”

Before Sophie was located, Angela received an email from lighthouse painting collector Mike Smith who said if the artist was not found he would buy it with the proceeds going to charity.

He said: “The landscape is similar to the Scilly Isles which I have a real fondness for having visited many times.”