Artist/Maker: Robin Tanner - Aberystwyth University School of Art Museums and Galleries

Born: 1904, UK, England, Bristol Died: 1988, UK, England, Chippenham, Old Chapel Field

Etcher and teacher. Son of a journeyman carpenter. Tanner worked first as a primary school teacher in Chippenham before studying teaching at Goldsmiths’ College, 1922-4. Whilst teaching, he also took evening classes in life drawing and etching under Clive Gardiner (1891-1960) and Stanley Anderson (1884-1966) at Goldsmiths’ School of Art. His first etching, A Tithe Barn (1926), was inspired by artists such as Samuel Palmer (1805-81) and F. L. Griggs (1876-1938). Throughout his life, he found inspiration in the English countryside, especially Wiltshire. During the late 1920s he became a full-time artist but had to return to teaching in 1929, when the demand for English prints began to wane. He became a school inspector in 1935, a role that left no time for his art; hence, June (1946) was his last print until his retirement in 1970, after which he devoted himself to printmaking again. He was made an associate member of the Royal Society of Painters-Etchers in 1936 and a senior fellow in 1973. He became a member of the Royal West of England Academy in 1952. Tanner and his wife published books on the English countryside such as Wiltshire Village (1939) and A Country Book of Days (1986). They established the Crafts Study Centre, now part of the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, University College, Farnham, in the 1970s.

Objects in the collections associated with this artist/maker