Tanner (Robin)

an inscribed copy in Tanner’s hand, indicating it to be a special proof impression for the publisher, reading ‘The Wicket Gate: This impression was printed for Robin Garton at Old Chapel Field Press, Kington Langley, Wiltshire, Jan, 1978’. Robin Tanner (1904-1988) trained at Goldsmith’s College, London, where he and a number of notable fellow students, including Paul Drury and Graham Sutherland, were heavily influenced by the recently revived interest in the visionary pastoral works of the Shoreham period of William Blake’s disciple, Samuel Palmer. In 1931, Tanner married Heather Spackman, and in 1932 they built a home together, Old Chapel Field, in Kington Langley near Chippenham in Wiltshire, where he established his press. His early printmaking career was largely put on hold, though, from the 1930s through to the early 1960s, while he pursued a highly successful and influential career in education, but was thereafter very frutifully revived right up until he died. This is a fine example of his later work, first created in 1977 before being published by Garton in 1978, it beautifully depicts the weathered and aged timbers of an otherwise insignificant old gate, almost overgrown with meticulously studied plant life, standing slightly ajar before a path winding into a sunlit glade in an ancient oak wood.

Etching in the third and final state, on cream laid paper, 170 x 165 mm. (13 x 10 3/4 in), signed and inscribed, Robin Tanner fec. et imp. ’78, in pencil, lower centre, titled and further inscribed below, outside the edition of 49 published by Garton & Cooke, [Garton 37 III]. 

Provenance: the collection of James Roose-Evans, founder of the Bleddfa Trust which hosted the exhibition ‘Robin Tanner: Etcher’, organised in conjunction with the artist who sadly passed away nine days before the opening in May, 1988.