Maryport's significance as an artists' town was partially revealed this week.

The town has attracted many artists, including LS Lowry, who featured Christ Church, the harbourside church, in more than one of his paintings.

This week, however, belonged to Percy Kelly, the Cumbrian artist whose works were admired and collected by people including Winston Churchill and Princess Margaret.

Born in Workington in 1918 into a poor and devoutly religious family of seven children, Percy Kelly could draw as soon as he learned to hold a pencil.

He developed a style based around strong lines and dark vistas. He had no time for irrelevant detail or pretty views, and wasn’t interested in creating a photographic or conventional record.

Rather, he wanted to make a good picture.

Kelly’s work is linear, graphic and simple. It has universal appeal. His charcoal drawings of the industrial coast of Cumbria made between 1958 and 1968 are unmatched in quality.

Maryport, with its geometric design and breathtaking harbour vistas, appealed to his sense of design. It became one of his favourite places from which to work, especially from the brows at the north end and the Settlement at the south end of the town

Important people befriended him and tried to help him, but he was averse to showing his work and was seen as difficult to deal with, vacillating, changing his mind, and cancelling exhibitions and sales regularly.

He was described in The Spectator as a ‘troubled genius’ and The Guardian compared him with Lowry, Sheila Fell and Rousseau.

Neither Kelly nor those living around him had any idea of the value of the work which haphazardly filled every space in his small cottage in Norfolk, where he had moved and lived in self-imposed exile.

Frightened of losing his supplementary benefit, he had secretly stashed away parcels of choice work, which he posted to friends and relatives to keep them safe and had then forgotten about them.

Artist Chris Wadsworth, who published a Percy Kelly Trail, joined Maryport Mayor Peter Kendall to unveil a billboard on Shipping Brow.

Mr Kendall said he hoped the trail would encourage local people and visitors to take the walk and enjoy the town.