TENCH, Ernest George

1885 - 1942

Ernest George Tench was born at Lowestoft, Suffolk on 8 April 1885 and baptised at St John, Lowestoft on 27 February 1887, son of George Tench (1851-1898), a plumber, and his wife Hannah née Cockrell (1853-1930), who married at Lowestoft on 29 November 1873. In 1891, Ernest was a 6-year-old, living at West Side, Clapham Road, Lowestoft with his parents, 40-year-old George and 38-year-old Hannah with five sibling sisters, Beatrice Mary 15, Ellen Martha 13, Laura Elizabeth 11, Edith Hannah 4 and Lilian May 1, all born at Lowestoft. His father died in 1898, when young Ernest was a shop porter, and his mother became a boarding housekeeper at 42 Clapham Road, Lowestoft, one of the boarders was a young Frederick Meen (1885-1951), an architect's apprentice, who may have taught Ernest the rudiments of drawing. Ernest married at St Margaret's Church, Lowestoft on 11 April 1905, Annie Elizabeth Strange (5 September 1883-3 March 1948), and in 1911, a 25-year-old sign writer, living at 4 Suffolk Road, Lowestoft with his 26-year-old wife Annie and their two daughters, Winifred 5 and Vera 3. By this time, he was also a marine artist as, when he completed the census form this occupation was deleted for sign writer and he was one of the many so called 'pier head artists' who chronicled the many vessels of the then prodigious North Sea fisheries. He usually painted in oil on board and his paintings show remarkably accurate details. In 1939, a sign writer, living at Ashmere, Normanston Drive, Oulton Broad, Lowestoft with his wife Annie and daughter Evelyn Vera [Pulman] born 10 April 1907. Ernest George Tench was of Ashmere, Normanston Drive, Oulton Broad, when he died at 23 Hill House Drive, Norwich on 6 January 1942, aged 57 and his wife followed in 1948, aged 64. The East Anglian Maritime Museum at Great Yarmouth hold several of his works.

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Works by This Artist