John Tunnard 1900-1971

The Estate of the Artist, until at least 1997

P. Huxley (ed.), Exhibition Road: Painters at the Royal College of Art, Phaidon, Christie's and the Royal College of Art, Oxford, 1988, illustrated;
Alan Peat and Brian A Whitton, John Tunnard: His Life and Work, Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1997, no.885, illustrated in colour, plate 56.

Messenger is Tunnard’s last masterpiece. Almost unparalleled in scale amongst his oeuvre, it brings together virtually every theme that had concerned the artist and at a time when his health was failing, yet in the range of techniques he employs and the strength of the image, there is no evidence of faltering eye, hand or vision.

Science had long been a strong interest for Tunnard, and the way in which he had consistently interwoven the themes of the scientific and the surreal into his paintings is quite unlike anything else in the art of his time. Once his mature image began to form in the works of the 1940s, the weirdly atmospheric pseudo-landscapes which he produced frequently combined references which left the spectator adrift in a hinterland of a world that appeared strangely familiar yet was simultaneously apocalyptic.

Messenger takes as its central theme a large receiving dish which, surrounded by varied technical equipment and a tall aerial, dominates the vast and empty landscape around it. Aimed towards the heavens, it is not concerned with earthly events, rather looking beyond the confines of its evident heavy physicality. 1969 was of course the year of the moon landings and for Tunnard, the possibilities and apparatus of space were hugely involving, and perhaps hint at a world which, separated by only a few decades from our own, was still astonished by the apparently boundless leaps in discovery and exploration that were being made at the time. Natural, chemical and physical science were all of interest to Tunnard, but combined with his artistic leanings towards surrealism and an enthusiastic and practical involvement in jazz, the resultant paintings exist in a space that is entirely their own.

Tunnard’s picture-making process has been a bane of curators for some time. The combination of media is notoriously difficult to analyse and for the viewer this can mean that the paintings reward extensive contemplation at both close and far quarters. The strength of the central image in Messenger is clear, yet when one investigates the surface more closely, wonderfully delicate motifs appear throughout the image with minute pencil markings dotted across the surfaces placed by the side of a range of incised lines that never seek to disguise the physical involvement of the artist. Similarly, the means by which the gessoed surface of the board is transformed by the application of the thinnest washes of paint into a light filled sky is key to the creation within the painting of the wide and expansive space in which all the main elements exist.