Rena Gardiner: Artist and Printmaker

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This first book on the artist and printmaker Rena Gardiner (1929–1999) is long overdue. Her guidebooks to historic places, buildings and the countryside have an idiosyncratic style that is unique in post-war British art. Her principal achievement was some 45 books, all of which she wrote, illustrated and printed herself, and of which no two copies are the same. But her legacy also includes paintings, pastels and linocut prints. Her collectors and admirers are many, and in recent years a new generation of artists and printmakers have discovered her work, helping to spread the word and foster the recognition she merits. She was probably best known for the many guidebooks she made, and her largest client was the National Trust, but she also produced many lithographs and linocuts of buildings and landscapes from all over the country and of her travels in Europe. Rena Gardiner (left) came to Dorset in 1954, taking a cottage in Wareham and travelling to her day job teaching art at Bournemouth School for Girls on a Lambretta. By then she had already illustrated and printed one book and was a consummate printmaker, inspired by the lithograph makers such as John Piper and Eric Ravilious that flourished between the wars. Setting up a makeshift workshop and studio in her garage she continued to make prints and before long was producing her first books, soon outgrowing her garage and precipitating her move to Tarrant Monkton in 1965. With the publication of this celebration of Rena Gardiner’s work, we hope to draw attention to her considerable contribution to lithographic illustration whilst simultaneously shining a light on the broader aspects of her legacy as an artist – her paintings, pastels and linocut prints. None of this has been published before. Much of it was thought to have been lost after the sale of her estate and clearance of her studio following her death in 1999. Thankfully, during the research for this book a considerable body of her work was discovered in private hands and the archives of the National Trust at Cotehele in Cornwall. Its inclusion only serves to underline her achievement. This required her to put on a dress and hat in which she felt most awkward; returning home she was relieved to don her normal practical attire of trousers and polo shirt,’ notes Julian in his text for the book.

I’ve not been told this but I suspect she didn’t suffer fools well,’ he says. ‘She was not naturally gregarious and did not participate in village life at Tarrant Monkton of drinks and dinner parties. She would though, if asked, gladly help out with cards to be sold for church funds, but generally she just got on with her work and saw the small circle of friends she knew from her days as a teacher.’ Rena Gardiner’s utterly charming guidebook to Cotehele, first published by the National Trust in 1973, describes the ‘Prospect Tower’ as looking like a church tower from a distance whereas, she continues, it is ‘nothing more than a folly’. Nothing more than a folly??? This casual comment can be forgiven when one sees her distinctive and delightful illustrations – she was clearly a fan of the landmark. Gardiner’s text describes another alleged function of the tower: that it was used to signal between Cotehele and Maker church on the Mount Edgcumbe estate (which is feasible – the two towers have sight of each other). Those guidebooks, there are about 40 in all, have been collected by enthusiasts such as Julian for many years, but since the publication of the book – already into its second print – things have started to change. Rena Gardiner’s work rarely comes up at public auction so a sale this summer in Crewkerne attracted a great deal of attention.After leaving college Rena taught at a school in Lemmington Spa, it was during this period that she experimented with making her first lithographic book, Royal Leamington Spa (1954), printing and binding all 33 copies herself. Later that year she moved to Dorset to teach in Bournemouth, and took up residence in an eighteenth century cottage in Wareham with a garage that could be used as a print workshop.

In 1970, Rena gave up her teaching job and dedicated all her time to print making over the course of the next 20 years she designed and printed scores of topographical guide books All of these were printed at home on her own presses, without traditional publishers or other outside help. What she did was unique, and blurred the lines between art, illustration, printmaking and publishing.Cotehele stands just on the Cornwall side of the river Tamar that forms the boundary with Devon. The estate was the ancient seat of the Edgcumbes, but by the 18th century it was a secondary residence, with the family preferring nearby Mount Edgcumbe, overlooking Plymouth Sound. On high ground above the house at Cotehele stands this solitary three-sided tower, of which little seems to be known. No inscriptions give even a hint of its history. We’ll never know, but there are tantalising glimpses of Rena’s character throughout her work, such as in the enormous 10ft x 30ft mural made for Bournemouth School for Girls in 1960/61 to commemorate the original school buildings at the Lansdowne ahead of its move to a purpose-built campus close to Castle Lane. Lessons are captured in full swing, there’s an art class on the balcony, a school photograph being taken… and Rena includes herself astride her red scooter.

The original diary is painted in gouache, with some pen and ink details. This hardcover edition aims to recreate the original diary as closely as possible. It has been lithographically printed to the same size as the original, on G.F. Smith paper. This edition also comes with extra added treats. Her reputation continues to grow, with several exhibitions in recent years, particularly at National Trust properties. Further reading The primary technique she used was autolithography. This is a process when the drawing is taken from the original sketches and transferred on to clear film and then on to a metal plate. Rena did not work from a completed drawing. She used her judgement to build on the layers of hand mixed colour.

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March, daily Fine Foundation Gallery, Durlston Country Park, Swanage, 01929 424443, www.durlston.co.uk From the mid- 1950s through to the 1980s, Gardiner produced some of the most imaginative and lively lithographs and books. Initially her books were self-published, but then The National Trust commissioned her to produce guidebooks to some of their properties. This allowed her to become a full time illustrator and artist in later life. In the main her subject matter was topographical and she had an absorbing interest in architecture and, above all Dorset. Originally hand-printed and bound for friends in an edition of just 30, Rena Gardiner’s ‘Portrait of Dorset’ has recently been reissued by Design For Today. It is rightly considered to be her masterpiece, writes Jon Woolcott. That she chose to make her living so remotely, and as her biographers Julian Francis and Martin Andrews have pointed out, that she was so uninterested in publicity, meant that her sudden death in 1999 at the age of seventy, was practically unmarked. To this one might add that she was a woman, in an age of the (male) artist as star.

Her archive held at Dorset History Centre reveals not only examples of her work but also the whole process from the original sketches, the drawings on film, the metal plates and the linocuts. We also have examples of the completed books in Local studies. Her books are now highly sought after and collector’s items. The lithographs in Portrait of Dorset have primacy over the words. Rena Gardiner wrote the text herself, as she did throughout her career, for commissions which included work for the National Trust, but she had no real interest in typography – the words serve the purpose of accompanying the art and have no intrinsic beauty in themselves, but still, she used them to convey her opinions. Bere Regis, she tells us, is a ‘dull place’. She is never taken in by the view alone. Too many cottages, she writes, ‘remain rural slums.’ It’s clear too that her sympathies lie with the labourers of Tolpuddle, transported to Australia for their membership of a Trades Union and agitating for better wages when they were ‘virtually slaves of the soil and the landowner.’ The cover of Portrait of Dorset (1960), only thirty numbered copies and a few additional specimen copies were producedRena Gardiner was born in Epsom, where her father was an electrical engineer but also a skilled technical artist. In 1946 she enrolled at nearby Kingston School of Art to study graphics. During her time there she took the opportunity to visit as many exhibitions as she could and found herself inspired not by traditional art forms such as painting and etching but by much more modern artists and their techniques.She discovered the works of Edmund Bawden, John Piper and Eric Ravilious all of whom practiced lithography. She also discovered Kenneth Clark’s project Recording Britain and works by then unfashionable early landscape artists such as John Sell Cotman and Thomas Girtin. Inheriting her father’s love of technical drawing and anything mechanical at the age of 17 she went to study graphics and illustration at Kingston School of Art. The tower’s internal steps were missing when the property passed to the National Trust, but a new wooden staircase was installed so you can climb up and enjoy the view for yourself. There’s more on Cothele here https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/cornwall/cotehele However, perhaps her purest artistic expressions are to be found in the work she did entirely for her own reasons. As a boy of eleven in 1963, I first encountered the work of Rena Gardiner when, passionate about the world of knights and castles, I bought her guide to Corfe Castle – excited and inspired by the colour and imagination of her illustrations which contrasted so much with the dull text and grey boring halftones of most guidebooks of the time. I became a keen collector of her books, and years later, in August 1993, I went to visit Rena Gardiner in her home and workshop in Tarrant Monkton and spent the day with her, recording a first-hand account of her printing techniques, artistic influences, her experiences at art school and her teaching career, and taking photographs of her at work. Much of the biographical and technical detail in the following text is taken from the tape recordings made on that day and therefore reflect her own words. She was kind and welcoming, always keen to talk about her books, surprised but delighted by my interest and attention; modest about her achievements but strong in her passion and belief in her work.