Shorelands Summer Diary

Very good used hardcover in un-clipped dust jacket. Bumped corners; light spotting along top edge of textblock. Jacket rubbed with a few small chips at outer extremities.

Shorelands is the name of an estuary-side bungalow in the small village of Malltraeth, on the southern coast of Anglesey in North Wales. Charles Tunnicliffe used to visit the estuary for field studies whilst on holiday away from his native Cheshire. He bought the house following a tip-off from the local publican, whom he had asked to keep an ear to the ground for any indication that it might, one day, come up for sale.

Tunnicliffe spent half his working life here. He was at the very peak of his artistic ability when he arrived, at the age of 46, and drew the inspiration for this book.

Shorelands Summer Diary was the artist's own "baby", as were the carefully planned and exquisitely rendered watercolours that he painted for each years exhibition, and sale, at the Royal Academy in London.

Despite a prodigious output, Charles kept very little of his own work; apart from the sketch books and measured drawings (or bird maps as he called them) which were his reference.

These, and a few favourite paintings.

A fortunate exception to this practical rule was made in the case of one heavy package that lay on a shelf in the studio for almost thirty years, in the original stout wrappings that Collins had used when they returned it to him in 1952. It contained his finest collection of scraperboard artwork, the illustrations for this book, pasted down between their thick, protective boards.

This new edition of Shorelands Summer Diary is a faithful facsimile reproduction of the first, but there is a difference, in that advances in printing technology have enabled the fine detail in the original scraperboards to be reproduced here with greater clarity than was possible in the early fifties.