Anglesey: castle and priory, lighthouse and church

Blues, greens, browns and whites: the soothing colours of the land, sea, sky and buildings on Ynys Môn/Anglesey.

Artist Charles F Tunnicliffe exercised the same care with his filming as he did with his painting, aware always of colours, light, the lie of the land and the clouds above. Here are pastoral scenes on Anglesey plus shots of Beaumaris Castle where an entrance tower is being dismantled; a pleasure steamer on the Menai Strait; Penmon with priory ruins, St Seiriol’s Church and huge dovecote; Llangeinwen Church, Dwyran, and Trywn Du Lighthouse near Puffin Island/Ynys Seiriol.

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 and engraver, a teacher and an illustrator for e.g. Ladybird books and Brooke Bond tea cards. He also llustrated books by e.g. 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.