Robin Tanner - artist and educator

A young Robin Tanner

Robin Tanner was born in 1904 in Bristol although his family moved to Chippenham, Wiltshire while he was very young. Over 60 years he produced nearly 50 etchings celebrating his beloved Wiltshire countryside.

Tanner was also known as a radical educationalist, advocating a child centred approach to learning and the full integration of art and design into the syllabus. He trained as a teacher at Goldsmiths College, University of London from 1922-1924. Whilst at Greenwich he studied drawing and etching at Goldsmiths School of Art under Clive Gardner and Stanley Anderson, producing his first etching A Tithe Barn in 1926.

In 1928 he returned to Wiltshire to etch full-time and in 1930 he went to teach at his old primary school Ivy Lane School in Chippenham. In 1931 he married Heather Spackman (1903-1993) and moved into Old Chapel Field, Kington Langley, Wiltshire. He became an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers and in 1937 was appointed HM Inspector of Schools for Gloucestershire. In 1938 he offered asylum to Dietrich Hanff, a Jew, and registered as a conscientious objector. Dietrich was to live with the Tanners for the rest of his life.

Old Chapel Field, Kington Langley

Committed Quakers, pacifists and staunch supporters of CND, Robin and Heather also shared a love of the English countryside, its customs and traditions. These were reflected in their joint publications such as Wiltshire Village (Collins, 1939), while Woodland Plants (Robin Garton, 1981) revealed the depth of their botanical knowledge and strong preoccupation with ecology and conservation.

Robin and Heather

The Tanners, and others, set up the Crafts Study Centre Charitable Trust in Bath in 1970. Robin became one of the Craft Study Centre's founding Trustees. In the same year he resumed etching after a gap of 24 years and in 1973 he was made Senior Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers. In 1980 he had a retrospective exhibition at the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery which toured to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford in 1981.

 Robin Tanner died in 1988 at Old Chapel Field.