Raymond Sheppard, C. F. Tunnicliffe and Ernest Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea: Part Three

Tunnicliffe's cover to 1953 Reprint Society

I wonder if Raymond Sheppard had not died so young whether he, like his contemporary Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe, would not have earned himself an OBE. Considering his short life Sheppard had lots of post-nominals already.

Charles Tunnicliffe was born 1 December 1901 in Langley, Macclesfield, and died 7 February 1979 (aged 77) in Malltraeth, Anglesey and if Sheppard ever had a rival, I feel this man fits the bill. he, like Sheppard, was prolific and worked in the area of birds and animal painting and drawing.In fact in this strange tale of the Reprint Society's 1953 edition of the Old Man and the Sea, Tunnicliffe produced an almost equal number of drawings as Sheppard. It is not known whether he, like Sheppard, had some drawings rejected for inclusion - I guess simply because of space - but I'm glad the publishers listed which were which.

Publisher's Note

I confess, even knowing Sheppard art so well I have initially mistaken some of Tunnicliffe's for Sheppard's. They both contributed to The Children's Wonder Book in Colour and the subject matter is often the same too. Tunnicliffe produced "How to draw farm animals" in the same series that Sheppard wrote "How to draw birds", "More birds to draw" and "Drawing at the zoo"; both drew for Lilliput and drew in comics.

p.72 He started to work his weary way to the stern

p.86 The man ties the marlin alongside

p. 98 Shark fins approach

p.112 The man collapses exhausted still carrying his mast

p.116 The boy tends the old man in his bed

That completes all the published pictures by Raymond Sheppard, but with Christine Sheppard's permission here are 7 unpublished drawings. They were exhibited at the Wildlife Art Gallery and sold with the others as a whole collection. It was good to know the set had not been broken up and perhaps one day we might see high resolution scans appear.

The old man in bed

The marlin is caught

The old man pulls on the line

The marlin thrashes about

The man fends off a shark

Men gather round the boat and the marlin

The old man and the boy talk

Lastly, mentioning the Wildlife Art Gallery reminded me that they produced a poster for this exhibition (in Sept - Oct 2009)

Wildlife Art Gallery, 2009

And don't forget to browse the Tunnicliffe Society's pages

Raymond Sheppard, C. F. Tunnicliffe and Ernest Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea: Part Two

p.33 Flying fish

"There are only two characters of any consequence and one of them is a fish. The other, the principal character, is a Cuban fisherman who is getting on in years and is also down on his luck. Between his bad luck and his time of life there is an unavowed but strongly felt connection. The one seems to confirm the other, in his own mind as in that of his fellow fisher- men. Even the boy whom he has lovingly instructed in their trade is advised by his parents to leave the old man alone." - Dupee, F. W., 1953. "Hemingway Revealed: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway" [Review]. The Kenyon Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter, 1953), pp. 150-152 &154-155

p.35 Turtles chasing Portuguese-man-of-war

In my last article I told a bit about the background to the novella "The Old Man and the Sea", and now I turn to the first illustrated version produced by the Reprint Society (1953). This edition contains not just Raymond Sheppard's illustrations but also, those by Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe. The publisher commissioned them both to illustrate the book,
"Originally commissioned as alternatives, these two artists' different interpretations of the story were considered so excellent and so interesting in their varying styles that both have been included". As we shall see this is not quite true.

p.37 Man-of-war bird

 
The Reprint Society was started by Alan Bott and included in its make-up publishers Jonathan Cape, Chatto, William Collins, Heinemann, Macmillan, and John Murray, six of the largest publishers in the UK before the Second World War. In the Sixties it was bought out by partners Doubleday (in the USA)  and W. H. Smith in the UK, forming Book Club Associates. One can only imagine how successful the addition of Tunnicliffe and Sheppards' illustrations was based on the multiple editions published thereafter which retained them

pp40-41 The marlin and the old man

Seven illustrations exist by Sheppard that were unpublished and even without these Sheppard has 18 and Tunnicliffe 16 and that's without counting the multiple uses of Sheppard's illustration as cover and endpapers in various editions.

p.47 The man pulls hard on the line

p.54 The man dips his sore hand in the water

p.63 The marlin leaps

In Part Three on "The Old Man and the Sea" we see the unpublished drawings.

Raymond Sheppard, C. F. Tunnicliffe and Ernest Hemingway and The Old Man and the Sea: Part One

A bit of background

Title page

Spencer Tracy was an actor I loved as a kid (and still do). Boy's Town had me in tears when I first saw it. "[Ernest] Hemingway's agent, Leland Hayward, had previously written to the author: "Of all Hollywood people, the one that comes the closest to me in quality, in personality and voice, in personal dignity and ability, is Spencer Tracy."" (Taken from Wikipedia). Which part did he have in mind? That of "The Old Man and the Sea", or Santiago as he is called in the novella. The DVD is readily available The Old Man and the Sea [1958]

The Old Man and the Sea is a novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an ageing fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954. (from Wikipedia)

On recently re-reading this book (an unusual activity for me!) I was stunned at how the book is still a really good read. The loneliness of Santiago as he strives to claim that elusive prize of a large fish; the description of enduring pain; the whole vocabulary around fishing in a small boat on the ocean; the conversations he has with himself and with no-one in particular - all are so vivid.

p.7 Santiago carries the mast while the boy follows

For background to Hemingway and his writings we are fortunate in that his papers reside in the John F Kennedy Library and Museum (the Ernest Hemingway Collection).
Hemingway Letters and Documents from Cuba Now Available in the U.S. for the First Time at the JFK Library read a news release in October 2009:

Boston, MA – Through a groundbreaking initiative with the Government of Cuba, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library announced today that it is making available to researchers archival replicas of 3,000 letters and documents written by and to Ernest Hemingway while he was living at the Finca Vigía, the Nobel-Prize winning author’s home outside of Havana. The treasure trove of documents includes the corrected proofs of The Old Man and the Sea, the ‘Final’ movie script based on that novel,[letters from Adriana Ivanich, who] designed the dust jacket for [the first edition of ] The Old Man and the Sea

The Guardian newspaper has an article about the archive and mentions Adriana too as she figures large in Hemingway's list of women. A biography can be found here - apparently she too committed suicide in 1983, 22 years after Hemingway killed himself.

p.16: The boy looks after the worn out man

The old man, Santiago, was probably based on Gregorio Fuentes, who died aged 104 in2002, fifty years after the first publication of the story.

 

Hemingway, Gregorio and friend!
from http://www.cybercuba.com/oldman.html

The story appeared in Life magazine dated September 1952 and apparently five million copies of the magazine were sold in two days!

The first edition of Old Man and the Sea - with the cover by Adriana Ivanich - was published in 1952 and the illustrated version, with the strange set up of two illustrators (more on that next time) appeared in 1953, published by the Reprint Society "by arrangement with Messrs Jonathan Cape"

First edition Cover by Ivanich

1953 First illustrated edition
Cover art C. F. Tunnicliffe

The Reprint Society (22 Golden Square, London W1 - telephone GERrard 6185-9) published a bulletin called Broadsheet, "the bulletin of World Books" and the following article was written by Eric Linklater at the time of the reprint publication

World Books Broadsheet Aug 1953, p.2
Right Mouse > Save As for larger version

Listen to Ernest Hemingway reading his remarks prepared for the Noble Prize Banquet, which he did not himself attend.

p.28 Santiago heads out to sea

All the illustrations above are by Raymond Sheppard and from the 1953 edition of the book. In the next blog article I'll show the rest of the images and some unpublished ones too.