Arts patron and writer Mary Burkett, of Isel Hall, near Cockermouth, has died aged 90.

Miss Burkett was a champion of the arts in Cumbria for more than 60 years.

She was a teacher, adventurer, archaeologist, catalyst, traveller, patron, and a world authority on felt and on Cumbrian culture.

She was also an author, writing the biographies of 12 Cumbrian artists.

Born in Newcastle in 1924, she moved south to teach after obtaining her BA at St Hild’s College, Durham, during the war.

She came to Cumbria in 1954 as arts and craft lecturer at Charlotte Mason College, Ambleside.

In 1962 she spent seven months travelling in Turkey and Persia in an old Land Rover with a friend Genette Dagtoglu.

This adventure is described in their book The Beckoning East: A Journey Through Turkey and Persia in 1962.

Persia kindled Miss Burkett’s lifetime interest in felt. She was to become a world authority and was president of the International Feltmakers’ Association.

She wrote The Art of the Felt Maker in 1979 and encouraged and promoted many artists working in felt.

She staged an exhibition of the then unknown Jenny Cowern’s work at the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal.

With her friend Val Rickerby, Miss Burkett wrote the biography A Softer Landscape: The Life and Work of Jenny Cowern in 2007, saying she was “an artist too selfless to promote her own work”.

This was typical of Miss Burkett, who devoted her life to discovering, encouraging and supporting Cumbrian artists from Sheila Fell, Percy Kelly, and the potter Edward Hughes to many still flourishing today like Julian Cooper, Linda Ryle, and Donald Wilkinson.

She was always keen to find new artists like Joan Prickett in Blindcrake, the village closest to her home at Isel Hall.

On her return from Persia, she became assistant director of the Abbot Hall Art Gallery, becoming its director in 1966 at the invitation of its chairman Peter Scott.

He immediately tasked her to form the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry.

This she did enthusiastically and enjoyed its opening in 1971 by Princess Alexandra. It still flourishes today.

At Abbot Hall, Miss Burkett worked closely with Alfred Wainwright who, as Kendal borough treasurer, would meet her every Monday to discuss finances.

It was also at Abbot Hall that she first came across a young Aspatria artist Sheila Fell.

Miss Burkett helped her predecessor Helen Kapp with an exhibition of Fell’s paintings in 1965 and quickly recognised a talent which deserved national recognition.

They became friends, and after Fell’s death in 1979 Miss Burkett staged a major tribute to her at Abbot Hall in 1981.

In 2010 Miss Burkett asked her friend, author Cate Haste, to write a definitive biography Sheila Fell – A Passion for Paint.

Another artist whom Miss Burke encouraged and supported was Percy Kelly.

Her involvement in what she described as “his turbulent and exciting life” is captured in her huge collection of his lively and beautifully illustrated letters.

He sent her these continually from their first meeting in 1968 until he died in 1993.

Again with Val Rickerby, Miss Burkett wrote the first biography of him, Percy Kelly: A Cumbrian Artist in 1997.

She asked David Cross to edit and publish her letters from Kelly in Dear Mary, Love Percy in 2011, which won the Lake District Book of the Year award in 2012.

Miss Burkett believed that art was the foundation of everything. She said: “Everybody’s mind needs art whether they know it or not.”

In 1986, the same year she retired from Abbot Hall, she inherited the 14th century Isel Hall, near Cockermouth, from friend and kinswoman Margaret Austen Leigh.

She opened Isel Hall to the public once a week supported by a team of devoted, voluntary guides, started by Dorothy Morgan and now led by her friends Gillian Greggains and Carol Vanessa Hudson.

For a time, Isel Hall became home to a talented mix of her friends.

These included sculptor Josephina de Vasconcellos, Australian artist Nancy Tingey, musicologist Finbar O’Suilleabhain and art historian David Cross.

Miss Burkett never retired, but her vision of turning Isel Hall into a colony of artists, writers and crafts people was stalled by the sudden death in 2006 of potter Edward Hughes, who had set up a kiln there.

On her last Sunday she was, as president of Whitehaven’s Rosehill Theatre Trust, announcing a crucial grant from the Coastal Communities Fund that will ensure the future of the venue.

She had perhaps been the single, longest standing advocate of saving this historic theatre.

The night before she died she attended a lecture at Maryport’s Senhouse Roman Museum.

She had been a trustee of this museum for 20 years and its chairman for seven.

She was key to raising the money in the 1990s to establish it and when it later ran into difficulties she used her American contacts to secure its continued operation.

Miss Burkett has also tirelessly backed over many years, as a trustee and former chairman, the Armitt Museum and Library in Ambleside.

She never married and made her life’s work art and culture in Cumbria.

She had a huge number of friends from every walk of life, many of whom joined her to celebrate her recent 90th birthday at four parties at Hutton in the Forest, Isel Hall, Blindcrake Village Hall and at Abbot Hall.

Miss Burkett supported several organisations, either as a benefactor, patron, president, trustee or member, including the Wordsworth Trust, Cumbria Wildlife Trust and Cumbria Decorative and Fine Arts Society and Allerdale Red Squirrel Group and arranged for her friend, botanist Dr David Bellamy, to choose images for the group’s calendar.

The University of Cumbria made her an honorary fellow in 2007 and she initiated the arts fund at Cumbria Community Foundation.

Ms Haste said: “A light has gone out of our lives. Mary’s energy, encouragement and promotion of the arts, not only in Cumbria, was inspirational and unfaltering over six decades.

“We, the public, individual artists, writers, her countless friends and several now flourishing institutions owe her a great deal. She kept the creative spirit alive and illuminated all our lives.”

Miss Burkett will have a private funeral at St Michael and All Angels’ Church in Isel, and a public service will be held on February 6 at Carlisle Cathedral at 5.30pm.

CHARLES WOODHOUSE