ROBIN AND HEATHER TANNER TALKS FOR MAY / JUNE 2018

Here is the updated list of our talks series for this May / June. Please note that tickets for my talk as part of the Winchcombe Festival of Music & Arts are available direct via their website [ https://winchcombefestival.co.uk ] .

NB that this Festival talk (cost £5) does not include refreshments.  I will be offering a limited number of places for those wishing to come back to the Long Room Gallery after the talk for a traditional tea and handling session (additional charge £2.50) – for separate tickets please apply to me direct on the day or by telephone (01242 602 319) or email (johnedgeler@gmail.com) in advance.

Advertisements

NEW TANNER PUBLICATION

This new 48 page booklet to be published to accompany our Tanner retrospective that opens on 19th May 2018 is profusely illustrated with around 100 images. Printed in full colour A5 format on top quality paper, it includes around 20 Tanner etchings and similar numbers of his drawings and watercolours, and also some 20 period photographs. A fair proportion of the material included is comparatively unknown.

Sections are included on Tanner’s art, Robin and Heather’s marital home Old Chapel Field, Robin’s art work with children in Chippenham schools of the 1930s, their books and publications and a comprehensive gazetteer of where original Tanner material may be seen. There are no Tanner studies currently in print and this will provide a useful resource for Tanner afficinados and collectors alike.

This limited edition booklet priced £15 plus p&p is available solely from the Winchcombe Archive Collection, Queen Anne House, High Street, Winchcombe, GL54 5LJ.

[ Tel : 01242 602 319    E mail : johnedgeler@gmail.com ]

Robin Tanner’s Art V

There was also a softer focus in some of Robin’s output that can be seen in the image above illustrating Gray’s Elegy, with a long landscape vista in the background complementing a very evocative depiction of woodland. He also notably favoured misty country views as a background contrast to sharper focus foreground depictions of country flowers (see image at bottom).

Woods and trees provided notably favoured compositional subject matter for Tanner. Amongst many others, Tanner was very affected by the loss of the Elm from our rural landscapes, and produced work intended as an elegy on its departure.

Robin Tanner’s Art IV

Another core element of Robin’s oeuvre were sharply delineated images of flowers, grouped contextually by month or other theme. This example, Flowers in May, shows a display of flowers artfully displayed against the background of a Cotswolds graveyard headstone.

This is an artists re-imagining rather than a depiction directly from nature and with a strong pattern and design element. Tanner was a lifelong devotee of the art and design of William Morris, possibly an unspoken influence in this work.

Robin Tanner’s Art III

Another significant influence on Robin’s output were historic printed and engraved images of horticultural subject matter. Indeed we hope to have on loan for our forthcoming show a folio of such prints purchased at the Tanner dispersal auction in 1996, and bearing Robin’s signature.

In this instance, Tanner has produced a still life of flowers almost in the Dutch manner. As was often his wont, he also also used in the composition an element of landscape and in the foreground a scene from rural craft – in this instance the thatching of circular ricks of corn so redolent of the Wiltshire countryside of the inter-war years.

Robin Tanner’s Art II

Scenes from village life and local farms and rural dwellings were also a strongly favoured early theme, this example bearing comparison with Priory Farm produced by FL Griggs in 1913. The Tanner’s family photo album has a large section of images of vernacular architecture local to their marital home Old Chapel Field, built in 1930-1931.

It should however be emphasised that these works were by no means direct representations of actual buildings. Rather they were at times somewhat idealised recreations from the artists’s mind, and followed rural themes also employed by Sutherland and Drury in the mid to late 1920s.

Robin Tanner’s art I

This very evocative image of the late 1920s, Martin’s Hovel, is a good example of the influence of the somewhat mystical output of both William Blake and his devotee Edward Calvert. Tanner’s early career had similar evocative themes of the rural idyll and of the techniques of luminescence employed by Samuel Palmer.

Rural architecture and the work of fields are notably prominent, as are the large stooks of corn deliberately magnified in scale for the purpose of contextual emphasis. The prominent setting sun also quotes from Palmer.

Robin and Heather Tanner

The opening day of our next show, 19th May 2018, will mark the 30th anniversary to the day of the passing of Robin Tanner in 1988. Previous visitors to the Winchcombe Archive Collection at Long Room Gallery will be aware of the pastoral revival amongst young British artists of the 1920s largely inspired by the output of the 19th century romantic artist Samuel Palmer who became very much in vogue that decade.

At the core of these neo-pastoralists were a group who trained at or were associated with Goldsmiths College London. Probably the best known were Graham Sutherland and Paul Drury although Tanner, nicknamed country Robin by his friends, was very much part of this circle. Tanner was a teacher etcher at Goldsmiths and attended etching evening classes there run by the etcher Stanley Anderson.  The Chipping Campden based artist and book illustrator FL Griggs was also a strong technical and thematic influence on that Goldsmiths group.

So there will be a strong art theme to our May/June 2018 Tanner retrospective and we will be showing prints by William Blake, Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert to place in context a related selection of the output of Robin. A proportion of exhibits will also be for sale.

The show will also have as a focus, the arts and crafts haven that was the Tanner’s Wiltshire marital home, Old Chapel Field. Lastly there will be themed displays reflecting their mutual interest in children’s art, rural crafts and horticulture.

 

Robin and Heather Tanner A country living now opening Saturday 19th May 2018

Please see below initial details of our talks series for this May which includes a blend of art, design and horticultural themes.  All talks will take place at 3pm sharp and on this occasion we have also scheduled events on Sundays.  Venues are in the Long Room Gallery and at the Methodist Church Hall next door.