Charles Tunnicliffe Prints: A Catalogue Raisonne. First edition

London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2017. Hardback. 336pp. Dust jacket in a protective sleeve. First published on the occasion of the exhibition "Second Nature: The Art of Charles Tunnicliffe RA" at the Royal Academy. Charles Tunnicliffe is Britain's foremost twentieth-century wildlife artist. As an etcher, he came to prominence in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Many of his prints are informed by his experience of growing up on a Cheshire farm. His unsentimental representations of field labour and pig slaughter differ markedly from the nostalgic portrayals of rural England by contemporary etchers, whose pastoral vision was influenced by Samuel Palmer. Commercial success soon overshadowed Tunnicliffe's early recognition as a Royal College of Art trained printmaker. Since the mid 1930s, his pictures have been appreciated mainly at the second hand as illustrations for books, in advertisements, or as decorations on biscuit tins and collectable cards. As a result neither his early etchings nor the wood engravings he produced for popular novels such as "Tarka the Otter" by Henry Williamson were ever documented. This catalogue raisonne of prints serves as a reintroduction to an artist whose work has become more familiar than his name. Book and jacket as new.