Second Nature : The Prints of Charles Tunnicliffe RA
- Submitting institution
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Aberystwyth University / Prifysgol Aberystwyth
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 41786090
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- London
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- July
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Extensive research for this multi-component output accomplished a critical reappraisal and recontextualization of an artistic career spanning six decades. The resulting first-ever catalogue raisonné (336 pages) reproduces and documents 435 prints. Research involved transcriptions of a large body of difficult to access materials ranging from teenage diaries to business contracts in order to trace unrecorded works, some of which had to be printed from blocks and plates dispersed in collections across the UK. Interpretation for gallery display and publication documents the subject’s farming background, academic training and survival as commercial artist to achieve a complex autobiographical and (art) historical narrative.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Commissioned by and staged at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the exhibition Second Nature: The Prints of Charles Tunnicliffe RA is part of an extended research project that examines the professional, personal and institutional forces that shape early to mid-twentieth-century British printmaking and our understanding of it as art and visual culture.
Since the mid-1930s, Tunnicliffe’s pictures have been appreciated mainly second-hand: as reproductions in books and magazines, on calendars and biscuit tins. Children across Britain have learned about nature and the countryside from collectible cards and the Ladybird books he illustrated.
Tunnicliffe’s commissioned work, appreciated mainly for its forensic precision in capturing British birds and native wildlife, eclipsed his earlier accomplishments as an academically trained etcher and wood engraver and complicated the autobiographical reading of subjects reflecting his farming background. Being aligned with book illustration and magazine advertising, his prints were never methodically documented nor appraised for their use of media and techniques. Second Nature, Tunnicliffe’s first Royal Academy solo exhibition since his death, and the accompanying first-ever catalogue raisonné redressed that neglect.
Tracking down all of Tunnicliffe’s 435 prints and establishing a chronology required extensive research in public and private collections. Recovering images of which no lifetime impressions are extant involved sourcing unique plates and blocks. In the absence of scholarly discourse, sources employed include auction records, dealer catalogues, as well as the artist’s unpublished diaries and correspondences.
Critically acclaimed and popular, Second Nature engaged a diverse audience, including children, for whom gallery activities and interpretative materials were especially created. The display was subsequently reinterpreted in a Welsh context to draw on the artist’s life on rural Anglesey and to reflect on his attitudes toward the art market. The catalogue raisonné is now the principal source of reference for historians, curators, art dealers and the general public.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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