British painter and designer, born at Sandy, Bedfordshire, son of the painter J. C. Tunnard. After studying design at the *Royal College of Art, 1919–23, he worked as a textile designer until 1929, when he started painting. A year later he moved to Cornwall. In 1933 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Redfern Gallery, London, and from then on his work was seen in many individual and group shows. From the mid-1930s he was influenced by *Surrealism, particularly by *Miró. His paintings often combined forms from both technology and the natural world (he was an amateur naturalist) in semi-abstract compositions. Further Reading R. Glossop and M. Glazebrook, John Tunnard (1977) Excellent