In memoriam: Norman Ackroyd RA
By Ian Ritchie RA
Published on 19 September 2024
Ian Ritchie RA pays tribute to a master etcher whose travels at sea inspired his beautiful evocations of the British isles.
From the Winter 2024 issue of RA Magazine, issued quarterly to Friends of the RA.
That with black ink he lived, breathing the moist air of his beloved European archipelago.
Norman Ackroyd loved the idea of Turner, a barber’s boy, becoming Britain’s most loved artist. He, the butcher’s boy from Leeds, inspired by Turner’s fluid colours, conjured his own alchemy through his finesse in laying acid upon acid on copper, and with black ink leaving us with his unique refined contribution to etching – atmospheric illuminations of skies, sea and landscapes. As Turner was to water, Ackroyd was to acid.
Norman’s journey to master etcher is a passage of longing to achieve the ‘art of living’ as an artist. He made it brilliantly, with a profound belief in the democracy of print. He taught throughout his life, initially to survive financially, later for the joy of passing on knowledge.
Norman flowed with the seas, sharing his well-researched history of Early Christian outposts and the rich geology of these islands with selected travellers. This visual poet of land and sea loved words and he delighted in having a creative handful on his boat trips from the gannet guanosprayed Muckle Flugga via the Hebridean Outliers to St Kilda, down the west coast of Ireland to the puffin-colonised Skelligs: poets Dunn and Crossley-Holland – and always mentally accompanied by Keats and Heaney – as well as writers Macfarlane, McNeillie and Frayling, musicians, and a family member or two.
He thrilled at doing fragile battle with the ocean’s roll and pitch, the squalls, any one of which would contribute spit and salt air to his work in his annual summer studio de plein air.
Back in his Bermondsey studio one recognised how his photographic memory partnered the movement of his brush or pen, not only of what he had seen and was translating onto metal or paper, but also those words and music he had heard or read or was inventing as his ink-laden finger pointed to a landscape that only he could recall so movingly. In the Convocation House next to the Bodleian Library, he delivered a mesmeric performance of his version of a rock-laden shipping forecast, recalling every small island and sea stack as his mind journeyed from the Shetlands to the Scillies.
Listening to Norman recount his discovery of Picasso’s ink at his studio revealed the brilliant raconteur. The walls lined with the work of his favourite printmakers stimulated stories about the innovative Dürer, the dramatist Hogarth’s visual wit, the romantics Goya and Blake, and from his own beloved Yorkshire, Moore, Hepworth and Hockney.
Norman was passionate about the Royal Academy’s history and its Laws which, like so many learned societies established in the 1700s, were written by outstanding minds. He knew them by heart, and his respect for their logic and elegance underpinned his commitment to the Academy, into which he was elected in 1988. Tradition for Norman was the cultural lineage upon which we live, whether as artists exploring the landscape of our ancestors or supporting and promoting the collegiate nature of the Academy. He contemplated standing for President when he sensed a loss of its true values and argued against change towards incorporation.
He loved hanging the print rooms at the Summer Exhibition and sharing adventures with Academicians, Red Collars and art handlers. However, he was dismayed when the selection process allowed the digital screen to become god. The RA Publications team loved him when preparing those beautiful books reproducing his watercolours made at sea. His appreciation of Turner was not limited to his art, but to their shared passion for the Academy, and shared belief that for change to happen, we Academicians must act together. Norman lived a wonderful life.
Ian Ritchie RA is an architect.
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