Belated homage to city's amateur genius

At the age of 78, Alfred Ackrill was persuaded to enter a competition for scenes depicting Manchester life.

A retired builder's labourer from Oldham who had sketched and painted all his life, he won the top prize - a trip to Paris - and he and his wife, Florence, looked forward with excitement to their first trip abroad. They had spent most of their holidays in a caravan in north Wales.

As they were applying for their passports, they had a call from the competition's organiser; the runner-up had complained that Ackrill's winning picture was of Chester, not Manchester, and the contest was declared null and void.

Ackrill had learned to love the work of the Impressionists from seeing illustrations in books, but he was never to see the pictures themselves in the great galleries of France.

Undaunted, he continued with his work and was still sketching two days before he died aged 81 in 1988.

Born in Sheffield, Ackrill had shown an early talent for art but was unable to take up a scholarship at Oldham college of art because his family was very poor. Instead, he produced thousands of pictures in his spare time, often painting over completed works because he could not afford new canvasses.

He sold none of his paintings through dealers, and most were given to friends who could sometimes persuade him to take £10 for his effort. Few were seen in public, and none is owned by a public gallery.

This month 27 works, including a striking self-portrait with a tartan tie hanging outside his sweater, go on show at Manchester Art Gallery in an exhibition called Alfred Ackrill: A Manchester Impressionist Discovered.

"We are absolutely overjoyed," said his daughter, Gill Wright. "My dad would be so pleased. That's all he wanted - for people to see his pictures and enjoy them. He had a passion to paint."

The works include a colourful fruit stall set against the grim concrete of a Manchester car park, and a portrait of Mr Southern, an Oldham neighbour, in flat cap and muffler.

There are also beach scenes, a crane, a digger on a hillside, and cooling towers. One picture of travellers' caravans was never completed because the artist fled when the residents threw stones at him.

"The pictures are very direct and have an immediate appeal," said Catherine Dickinson, the exhibition's curator. "What sets Ackrill out from other semi-professional artists is the way he transforms his subject matter.

"He was very influenced by the Impressionists' styles and techniques, and was obviously a big fan of John Singer Sargent."

The exhibition is a triumph for Mrs Wright and her brother, Steve, who own most of the extant 85 pictures. They had promised their mother, who died in 2001, that they would try to ensure their father's work was seen in public.

"I suddenly got this bee in my bonnet that I had to do something," said Mrs Wright. "I discussed this idea with my mother and brother. I was arguing with him over who was going to have a favourite picture of daffodils which my mum had on her wall.

"At that point, the picture fell off the wall. We couldn't decide whether that was a sign from dad that we should or should not go on with the idea for an exhibition."

Mrs Wright went to the Manchester gallery with 20 works, hoping curators might take one for the city's collection. They offered a show, a selection from the pictures lovingly stored in cupboards and on wardrobes in Mrs Wright's small home in Portsmouth.

"My dad was a very self-effacing man," she said. "He never made a fuss about anything, and he never believed in selling his pictures. He painted from the heart, not to make a profit. We lived in a two-up, two-down terrace, and my dad always had a desk in the corner of the sitting room with a painting on the go."

· Alfred Ackrill: A Manchester Impressionist Discovered opens at Manchester Art Gallery on January 18