A series of signed and numbered etchings of Cheshire life in the early part of the 20th century by the Macclesfield born artist Charles Tunnicliffe are for sale at Bonhams Prints sale in London on 22 September.
Tunnicliffe is internationally known as a bird and wildlife artist and his love of nature shines through these works. Many of them are thought to have been executed in the late 1920s while he was living in London and studying at the Royal College of Arts’ Etching and Engraving School before he moved back to Macclesfield in 1928.
The subjects of the etchings range from a lively rendering of the hustle and bustle of the Macclesfield Horse Show to a sweeping, almost lyrical, view of a Cheshire Plain to countrymen going about their occupations – a sheep doctor, a singing ploughman, hay carters, wheat balers, a farmer and his wife tending a new born calf and a fine image of farmhands heading off to work in the fields. Not surprisingly animals feature strongly with several beautifully observed images of cattle and pigs, a magnificent rearing stallion and a hare worthy of Dürer.
This is no sentimental view of rural life, however. As a man raised in a farming community, Tunnicliffe was all too aware of the realities of life in the countryside. His workers work. ‘To the slaughter’ depicts the physical effort involved in hauling a reluctant a pig off to the slaughterhouse and ‘Hard Winter’ shows a farmer forced to feed his sheep when the ground is so frozen they cannot graze.
In all there are 21 etchings with prices ranging from £150-200 at the lower end to £500-700 at the higher.
For further sale information please go to www.bonhams.com/prints
