The Estate of Edwin Tanner
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Edwin Tanner
Fallen Hero, 1959
oil on board
82.00 x 86.00
signed and dated 'Edwin Tanner 59' l.l.; title and numbers 10 and 39 inscribed on reverse
Tanner and his family moved from Tasmania to Melbourne in 1957 following the controversial Orr case. Most of 1958 was spent settling into the new home and setting up his engineering practice. This work, dated 1959, will therefore be amongst Tanner's first Melbourne paintings and can be seen as a transition between the power station and office interior paintings of the early 1950s (see The Engineers, 1954 in the AGNSW collection) and his 'Musical Pipes' series of the 1960s (see The Science Faculty, 1960, also in the AGNSW collection). The artist's collection of handmade timber recorders (a craft he appreciated possibly due to his training as a carpenter and joiner with BHP) may well have been the model for his musical pipes series. This work can be seen as a precursor to the larger and warmer toned but almost identically composed Operatic Aria, 1960 in the TarraWarra Museum of Art Collection (Anthony Fitzpatrick, Edwin Tanner: Mathematical Expressionist, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, 2018, exhibition catalogue, illus. p. 56)
Further works by the Artist
Since its establishment in 1984, the Charles Nodrum Gallery’s exhibition program embraces a diversity of media and styles - from painting, sculpture & works on paper to graphics and photography; from figurative, geometric, gestural, surrealist & social comment to installation & conceptually based work.