Eric Tucker: At Home

Following two previous sell out shows in 2020 and 2021, this exhibition delves further into the artistry of Eric Tucker. Alon Zakaim Fine Art and Connaught Brown have transformed their Mayfair galleries into Tucker’s Warrington studio/home and local pub. The galleries want to immerse the viewer in Tucker’s world and display his extraordinary pictures in the surroundings that inspired them.

Only revealing the extent of his work, even to his family, shortly before his death in 2018, this “discovery” of his paintings led to a solo exhibition at Warrington Museum & Art Gallery a year later. Since then, his posthumous celebrity began and has continued to grow. 

The artist with whom Tucker is most commonly identified is L.S. Lowry. Both artists worked in northern England, choosing their bustling industrial cities and its peoples as their focus. While Lowry mainly stands back from a scene assessing, Tucker’s work is close and personal. He painted his friends and neighbours and the small community of which he is a part.

Tucker's use of low perspective in works such as Bar side Dominoes Game and Double Four to Win, propel the viewer into the scene. One can imagine the sound of the band playing, the taste of beer, shouts of children playing in the street, and the smell of heavy cigarette smoke in the air. The compositions are tight and engulf the entire canvas. By cutting off his figures there is a constant sense of movement and hubbub, as if he is capturing a fleeting moment in time. 

Tucker was inspired by the quirkish originality of his favourite artist, Edward Burra. Both men were solitary figures when it came to their art, careful not to be impacted by uninvited opinions. These artists recorded what they saw as they saw it, depicting their realities and eccentricities with neither caricature nor idealism.

Their visions of working class life were not only of labour, but also of leisure. While Burra drew inspiration from the lively nightlife of Harlem, Tucker explored local scenes of entertainment and the popular spectacles of music, performance, and the circus.

Influenced by Burra, whose watercolour technique is remarkably rich and complex, Tucker took up this medium later in his life. Both artists created layered compositions that manage to show both the collective and intimate aspects of human interaction.

Tucker and Burra were skilled at evoking the atmosphere of a scene beyond simply the visual aspect. It is this power to involve the viewer in the whole environment which makes Tucker’s work so special.