Artist captures tea for two in his painting dedicated to great-aunts

The quintessential English afternoon tea is the essence of what one Ely-based portrait painter is trying to capture.

Ted Coney, former head of art at Cambridge’s Hills Road Sixth Form College, works primarily on the theme of family life.

He lives in Ely and has popped in a few doors away to Peacocks Tearoom on Waterside as research for his latest work.

He said: “I needed to paint a quintessential afternoon tea and where better to come than here?”

The finished work will symbolise two of Mr Coney’s great-aunts as he remembers them in later life.

But as part of his research he found they lived rather more exciting lives during the Second World War.

One was a code-breaker at Bletchley Park, while the other was a nude model at the Windmill Theatre in London.

Mr Coney said: “It was where the girls were allowed to pose artistically but if they moved, the show was threatened with closure.”

His work is on display at the Ted Coney’s Family Portraits gallery where he lives with his wife, Hazel.

Although no work is for sale, he gives themed half-hour guided tours of the house and family paintings stretching back 40 years.