People knew Eric Tucker as many things – boxer, steelworker, building labourer, habitué of working men’s clubs and bookmakers – but few knew this tall, unkempt, heavy-set man as a painter. Shortly before his death at 86 in 2018 he suggested to his brother that it might be nice to hold an exhibition of his work. What the family found in the Warrington council house where Tucker had lived with his mother almost all his life was a cache of 500 paintings filling every room, the garden shed and even the old air-raid shelter. When, after Tucker’s death, the house was opened for two days as a free gallery, thousands queued to get in.
In this gentle memoir, the painter’s nephew Joe Tucker winningly recounts not just the story of Eric’s life and his own interactions with him but the reception of all those paintings over the past few years and what drove their creator to make them. Eric Tucker is routinely described as another Lowry, a northerner who depicted the streets, drinking dens and working-class life of the industrial north. His paintings, however, are far more accomplished – sometimes borderline comic, always teeming, and becoming very expensive indeed.
By Michael Prodger
Canongate, 224pp, £18.99. Buy the book
Content from our partners
