A PLAQUE honouring a renowned York artist has been installed at the £1.1 million house that was once her home.

Mary Ellen Best, who was born in York in 1809 and brought up on Little Blake Street (now Duncombe Place), was known for her watercolours and paintings of interiors.

York Art Gallery has a small collection of her work and a self-portrait, titled The Artist at Work, is currently on display in the museum's 70 Years of Giving exhibition.

York Civic Trust has now unveiled a plaque at the painter's former home at 14 Clifton.

A spokesman for the organisation said: "She was particularly interested in interiors, showing us European houses with their furniture and furnishings, with servants working in kitchens and maids in hotels.

"Her own homes featured largely in her work. Probably the most interesting for York residents are her paintings of the 1830s, the decade in which she was most prolific.

"Here she painted interiors of churches and of ordinary people in their homes, showing how they furnished them and the clothes they wore."

She also painted a view of Marygate in 1830 and a street scene in Clifton on May Day 1833.

Mary Ellen Best's father, Dr Charles Best, was physician to York Lunatic Asylum, which became Bootham Park Hospital. Mary Ellen married a Frankfurt schoolmaster at St Olave's Church in Marygate in 1840 before moving into the house on Clifton.

The couple later moved to Germany and Mary Ellen died in on May 10 1891 in Darmstadt.

A spokesman for the civic trust said: "She used her easel and sketchbook much as nowadays we use cameras, painting portraits of friends and family, of her children and her sister’s children growing up, and of favourite buildings and scenes in the streets as she went about her ordinary life.

"Many of her paintings, estimated to be around 1500, are still in private hands and may come to light fully in coming years."

The five-bedroom semi detached house is now on the market for £1.1 million with estate agency Savills.

The agents say the house was built around 1800 and has been owned by the same person for the past 20 years.

For more information visit savills.co.uk.