The grave of the artist Lucy Kemp-Welch in St James’ parish churchyard, in Bushey, has been restored after years of neglect.

Kemp-Welch died in 1958 and shares the grave with her sister, Edith, and Marguerite Frobisher, her live-in companion following Edith’s death.

Kemp-Welch was born in Bournemouth, showing an early excellence in art, exhibiting for the first time when she was 14 years old, and moving to Bushey to study at Hubert von Herkomer’s art school at the age of 19.

As one of Herkomer's best and most favoured students, she was able to set up her own studio, in an old former inn known as "Kingsley". She took over the direction of the school after Herkomer in 1905 and ran it until 1926.

Several of her paintings are on permanent display in Bushey Museum including very large paintings of wild ponies on Exmoor, galloping polo ponies, the last horse-launched lifeboat being pulled into a boiling sea, heavy working horses pulling felled timber and hard-working farm horses trudging home at the end of the day.

However, she is probably best known for her illustrations to the 1915 edition of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty.

For some time her grave had been in a seriously dilapidated state and the Trustees of Bushey Museum decided that action should be taken to restore it. The Kemp-Welch family donated half of the cost of the restoration and the balance was met by a Community Grant from Hertsmere Borough Council, on the grounds that Lucy had given the Bushey community "much pleasure over the years from her paintings, and also her designs for the Jubilee Arch (1935) and two Coronation Arches (1956) erected temporarily in Bushey village".

The grave lies about two-thirds of the way down the graveyard, on the left-hand side of the main pathway through the centre.