Tributes have been paid to a Borth artist who passed away late last year.

Muriel Delahaye was born in Oldham in Lancashire in 1931 but she made her home in the seaside village of Borth, where she lived for almost 50 years, and where she would paint daily until shortly before her death at the age of 89 in December.

A figurative artist, she became known for her distinctive oil paintings of larger-than-life characters walking the beaches of Cardigan Bay.

Her passion for painting the coastline was inspired in the mid 1990s by an open call for entries for the annual summer exhibition at Machynlleth’s Museum of Modern Art.

The theme was See the Sea and Muriel’s painting won first prize. Since then, her work has been regularly exhibited and sold at the Albany Gallery in Cardiff, Oriel Tir a Môr, and Libanus 1877 in Borth.

As well as the sea and local beaches, her art often reflected the area’s folklore and history such as the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod or the women who - clad in black clothes and known as Brain y Borth (the Crows of Borth) - would sell the herring during the village’s heyday as a fishing port.

Artist and art lecturer at Coleg Ceredigion Julian Ruddock knew Muriel and her work well.

“Muriel’s art had a big effect on people and often their reaction was a smile. They recognised something in her paintings that was very heartfelt and individual and that reflected a very particular place, her home in Borth.

“The wonderful beachcombing characters Muriel depicted - bathers, fisherfolk, dogwalkers and gatherers of flotsam and jetsam, inhabited a world that emerged from her wry observations of the people that she saw on the beach. Muriel’s work has a distinctive style that makes it instantly recognisable and she has made a unique contribution to the rt scene in Mid Wales.”

In 2017, Muriel also published a book based on the diaries of her mother who as a young woman worked as a governess in St Petersburg during the Russian revolution of 1917.

The book, Miss Daisy’s Secret Russian Diary 1916-1918, reveals how Muriel’s mother Daisy and her two sisters came across many of the leading personalities of the time, including friends and family of the Tsarina and the ‘mad monk’ and mystic Rasputin.

Muriel is survived by her only son Louis, who also lives in Borth.