John Tunnard

The Lefevre Gallery, London
Private Collection

Alan Peat and Brian Whitton, John Tunnard, His Life and Work, Scolar Press, London, 1997, p.172, no.434.

The board is in good overall condition. The paint surface is intentionally rubbed, scraped and uneven, and is in good overall condition. There is no sign of retouching under ultra-violet light. Held under glass in a painted wooden frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5381 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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Like many British artists of the mid-century, Tunnard seems tantalisingly close to an adherence to the major movements of the time, yet he somehow always manages to retain an individualism that marks his works as something out of the mainstream.

Although for many of his contemporaries WWII caused a hiatus in their work, for Tunnard it was the period when his very particular blend of modernism, surrealism and a futuristically poetic vision of landscape came together to create a body of works that still fascinate and amaze. Always technically innovative, Tunnard perfected his manner of painting in the early 1940s, and much of what he established in these years was to remain at the core of his painting for the rest of his career.

Landmark is a prime example of how this synthesis of subject and technique came together to create works that over sixty years later appear fresh and powerfully mesmeric. Using a roughly applied gesso base, this was then carved, scored, stained, rubbed back and painted, the resulting images having a three-dimensional quality it is often difficult to believe they do not actually possess. In Landmark, interleaving abstract shapes, some solid, some spectrally translucent, hover over an empty landscape, drawing the eye of the viewer to an arched form that seems to rest on the horizon.