Ponies (Cable Bay) and Posies (Shorelands, Malltraeth)

Artist Charles Tunnicliffe’s cinematic ‘sketches’, include shots of a dredger and a horse-drawn cart on the Cefni estuary.

Tunnicliffe’s life centred around the Cefni estuary, Anglesey, a haven for the resident and migrating birds that he drew and painted with such skill and love. Here, a dredger is seen at work and a laden horse-drawn cart trundles by. Cable Bay Ponies nibble at each other, the way ponies do, and home flower arrangements reflect the garden’s gifts. A black tern, black-headed gulls and some turkeys also feature.

It was evident from a young age that Tunnicliffe (1901-79) had a gift for drawing. From a farm in Cheshire he won scholarships to the Macclesfield School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. He worked as an etcher, engraver and teacher, and as an illustrator for e.g. Ladybird books and Brooke Bond tea cards. He also illustrated books by Alison Uttley and Henry Williamson. He married Winifred Wonnacott (1902-69), a fellow RCA scholarship student from Holywood, Belfast, and they moved to ‘Shorelands’, a bungalow by the Cefni estuary, Malltraeth, in 1947. Their friends included naturalists T G ‘Wack’ Walker, Norman ‘Nomad’ Ellison, Ted Breeze Jones (also a photographer) and artist Kyffin Williams.