James Walker Tucker Boundary Stones

An original c.1930s watercolour painting, James Walker Tucker, Boundary Stones.

This handsome watercolour is one of a pair that we have for sale by James Walker Tucker (1898–1972). Titled 'Boundary Stones', he paints a quiet roadside scene, likely in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, with limestone bollards and dog-walker. Tucker represents the landscape with an understated consciousness of form and sense of pattern—modern, geometric and graphic. Reminiscent of the work of Eric Ravilious (1903–1942), he approaches his pastoral subjects with a preference for flat planes and hard lines. The subject too, seems to allude to the standing stones of prehistoric England, a sense of the pervasive ancientness woven into the fabric of the English countryside.

James Walker Tucker was born in Wallsend, near Newcastle, in Northumberland. He studied first at Armstrong College in Newcastle, and then at the Royal College of Art, London (1922–7). Here he was taught by Sir William Rothenstein, before becoming Rothenstein’s personal studio assistant. Tucker won a travelling scholarship to Italy, and on his return he was commissioned to paint a mural for the Laing Art Gallery. Exhibitions at the Royal Academy followed, and also at the New English Art Club. He went on to become Head of Drawing and Painting at Gloucester College of Art (1931) where he taught until his retirement in 1963.

Tucker is an artist who represents a neglected era in British Art: Realist painting between the two World Wars. Along with artists of the 1920s and 1930s such as Gerald Leslie Brockhurst, Meredith Frampton, Winifred Knights, Harold Williamson and James Cowie, Tucker eschewed abstraction and worked in a realist manner—precise, hard-edged and graphic, and with minimal narrative detail, as opposed to loose and painterly. Hugely respected and selling for vast sums in their time, after World War II these artists fell out of favour, eclipsed by the rise of abstraction and Pop Art.

Whilst their work was firmly in the realist tradition, these artists were also modernisers, especially in the adoption of new subject matter. Tucker's 'Hiking' (Laing Art Gallery), of 1936, showcases the newfound independence of young women post World War I and popularity of the great outdoors. And 'Their Hero' (Royal Air Force Museum), of 1939, brings a breezy, stylised optimism to a theme of tragic profundity.

James Walker Tucker's work can be found in numerous public collections, including Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, the Museum of Gloucester, The Wilson, Cheltenham and the University of Cambridge.

In watercolour with graphite on watercolour paper.

Presented in a smart oak frame. Frame size: 42.4 x 51.2cm. Image size: 25.2 x 35.2cm.