William Tillyer
Yorkshire landscape painter who keeps rebuilding what a painting physically is.
William Tillyer was born at Middlesbrough in 1938 and studied at the Slade, and has spent sixty years painting the landscape of the North York Moors while systematically dismantling the object it is painted on. He has worked on wire mesh, on trellis, on shaped and multi-panel supports, on paper hung loose, and in constructions where the picture is a grid with holes in it and the wall shows through — so that a hedgerow or a rainstorm is delivered by something that behaves like a fence or a window. Watercolour and printmaking have run alongside the painting throughout.
A British market, respected among painters and quieter at auction than the standing of the work would suggest. Large paintings and constructions lead; the mesh and trellis works are the signature pieces and are physically vulnerable, since the support is part of the image and distortion or corrosion of the mesh cannot be corrected without altering the work. Watercolours are numerous and are among the best things he does. Tillyer has a very substantial printed output in etching, aquatint and screenprint from the 1970s onwards.
If you own a work by William Tillyer
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.