An artist is looking to reunite a sea scout with a series of portraits in which he features.

Hazel Bailey was gifted a collection of 21 paintings five years ago but recently spotted three of the works showed the same boy, who is wearing a West Molesey scout badge in one of the pictures.

The 74-year-old from Chessington now wants to track down the young boy, who was pictured over a number of years, as she thinks he could have lived locally, although the artist John Freeling was from the Lake District.

She said: “The thing that interested me when I looked closely at it is on his shoulder above his tags it appears to say West Molesey.

“It would be very interesting to find out more about him.”

Mrs Bailey, who is a keen painter herself and member of Chessington Art Group, said she thought the paintings were done in the 1940s and the collection covered a range of subjects, including cath- edrals, old villages, leaves and a dog.

She has preserved the pictures from the collection in plastic cases after saving them from a friend of the artist who was going to get rid of them. She said: “I thought they were brilliant and he gave them to me.

“I would be quite happy and I could pass on certainly the sea scout picture.

“Even if I don’t pass the picture over it would be nice to know who this young man was.”

Do you recognise the sea scout? Get in touch with Clare Buchanan on 020 8744 4264.