Brenda Rawnsley persuaded some of the 20th century’s greatest artists – including Picasso, Matisse and Braque – to create original prints to be distributed to Britain’s schools. Her bold project for affordable modern art aimed to shape the tastes of a whole generation of postwar children who would otherwise have had little contact with fine art.

Rawnsley had little knowledge of art when she began the scheme in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. But her husband Derek, who was killed in 1943, had before the war founded a small company, School Prints Ltd, which hired out Old Masters to schools with the aim of improving aesthetic standards.

The young widow took over the business and set about revitalising it by focusing on original works by contemporary artists which would be sold at low cost, rather than rented. Within a year, despite scarcities and paper rationing, she had persuaded artists including L. S. Lowry, John Nash, Julian Trevelyan, Hans Feibusch and Feliks Topolski to contribute works which she then set out to sell to schools.

She reached the artists with the help of Herbert Read, the noted art critic, who suggested artists for Rawnsley to approach. Although he was an anarchist and she had been a society debutante, they formed a successful partnership, united by an interest in education through art. Rawnsley contacted artists with letters like this one to Barnett Freedman: “We are producing a series of lithographs, four each term, for use in schools as a means of giving children an understanding of contemporary art. By keeping the price as low as possible, we are able to bring this scheme within the reach of all education authorities . . . I wonder whether you are interested in this scheme and if so whether you could send us a small rough for consideration.” The fee was £85, with a royalty of £5 per 1,000 prints sold.

The first two series, with print runs of 4,000 to 7,000 for each of the 24 prints, proved successful and were much appreciated by teachers. One director of education wrote that they had helped to “foster a love of beauty in the children” – though some schools thought the art too contemporary, and were perturbed by some of the images. “Maybe I haven’t grasped the ‘inner meanings’ or maybe ought to be more childlike,” a Birmingham teacher complained.

Emboldened, Rawnsley decided that the third series of prints would expose children to art from beyond Britain, and borrowed £10,000 with which to entice some of the great names of French painting. In June 1947 she hired a plane and set off for France with Raglan Squire (obituary, June 9, 2004 ), a friend of her husband who had become chairman of School Prints.

Arriving in Paris, she tracked down Braque in Montparnasse and offered him £100 up front and the same again on receipt, but he said he would only be associated with the scheme if other reputable artists were involved. Léger, however, immediately agreed. After meeting Picasso’s financial adviser, Rawnsley and Squire decided to fly to the South of France to try to speak to the artist himself.

Loitering on the beach at Golfe-Juan, they succeeded in “bumping into” Picasso, who invited them to lunch. “It’s all very simple when you know what you’re aiming at,” Rawnsley recorded at the time. Persuaded that the scheme was for the benefit of “les enfants du monde”, Picasso agreed, although he turned down an invitation to fly with them as he felt that his life and works were too precious to be put at risk.

After stopping in Perpignan, where an arthritis-stricken Dufy said he would try to do something with his left hand, they revisited Braque. He now relented, and a very frail Matisse agreed to do a papier déchiré. Rawnsley returned to England only a week after setting off.

After the delicate process of getting the artists to deliver, and much negotiation over production and transport, the “European series” of six prints was launched in 1949, also including a work by Henry Moore. The timing was fortuitous, as Sir Alfred Munnings, president of the Royal Academy, had just launched a vituperative attack on modern art, denouncing Picasso and Matisse by name.

The series won widespread press attention in the resulting furore, which continued in 1951 when Rawnsley set off on a sales trip to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and America.

Artists were able to shrug off the criticism. Braque stated: “Children are the more useful and sharpest critics. They understand us because they live in a world of fantasy similar to artists.” Children do seem to have liked the prints – one 14-year-old was quoted as saying: “Picasso does not paint too badly. I should like to try, too!” But not enough educationists were convinced, and commercially the scheme failed – Rawnsley was left with a large debt and stacks of unsold prints.

Brenda Mary Hugh-Jones was born in Cowley, Oxford, in 1916. Her father was part of the British administration in Egypt and her mother was a cousin of Anthony Eden. Her parents divorced when she was young, and Rawnsley spent holidays from her boarding school variously hunting with the Edens in Wiltshire or visiting her father in Cairo.

Although she did well academically, Rawnsley chose the debutante circle over Oxford and spent several years enjoying a leisured life in England and Egypt. But at the outbreak of war she was eager to enlist, becoming a clerk at the Ministry of Economic Warfare after walking out on latrine duty at an ATS officer cadet unit.

She met Derek Rawnsley in 1939 and they married in February 1941.

The young pilot was immediately sent to Cairo and, determined to join him, Rawnsley wangled her way into the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and hurried through the officers course. She arrived in Cairo in January 1942 and it was during their time here that the couple formed plans to make prints for schoolchildren after the war. Derek Rawnsley was killed in an accident in February 1943.

Brenda Rawnsley spent the rest of the war working in Alexandria, Algiers and London, first for General “Jumbo” Wilson, Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East, then for Duncan Sandys. When the war ended, she devoted her drive and energy to realising the project she had concocted with her husband.

She carried on the original business of hiring out reproductions of well-known paintings to schools, and in the 1950s she expanded this to industry and then to hospitals. In 1953 she attempted, unsuccessfully, to sell sculpture to schools. She had joined the Fine Art Trade Guild in 1946, and became Master in 1961.

By the late 1960s Rawnsley began looking for buyers for the business. The Observer was running a scheme similar to school prints, whereby a new generation of artists such as Richard Hamilton, Elizabeth Frink, Joe Tilson and David Hockney were commissioned to produce original prints to sell to readers. In 1971 the paper agreed to sell the remaining stock of the European series. By this time the merits of the pieces were more widely recognised, and they sold well. The rest of the business was sold to the paper’s Middle East correspondent, Patrick Seale.

The remaining prints have now become highly collectible, and this year all 30 of the lithographs were exhibited at Pallant House gallery in Chichester. The School Prints, by Ruth Artmonsky, was published at the same time.

With the business sold, Rawnsley moved to Bury St Edmunds, where she became a librarian. On retirement she settled in Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire. She remained convinced of the importance of her scheme and in 1994 she commented that the situation in schools “is as desperate as it was after the war. I am utterly dedicated to the idea that the younger the child the better, because they do form ideas about shapes and colour at an early age.”

She was married for a second time to Geoffrey (Pete) Keighley, who predeceased her. She is survived by a son.

Brenda Rawnsley, managing director of School Prints Ltd, was born on July 31, 1916. She died on June 25, 2007, aged 90