John Penn (1921-2007)

View of the Martello Tower on Shingle Street, Suffolk

Click on the image for a larger picture

Pencil & watercolours on card
Signed:  John Penn
Inscribed:  Martello Tower
Inscribed au verso:  LifeBoat House / Nathalie Wycliffe and family / love and best wishes from John
11 x 15.5 cms
Provenance:  Wycliffe Stutchbury, architect, and friend of John Penn

Price:  please apply to jbl@gallerylingard.com

This view of the Martello Tower is drawn from the location of the Lifeboat House on Shingle Street on the Suffolk coast.  Some 29 martello towers were built on the East Anglian coast between St. Osyth in Essex and Aldeburgh in Suffolk as a defence against a possible invasion from Napoleon's French naval forces.  Of these towers, 17 remain, converted into houses or in a state of dereliction.

John Penn was an architect friend of Wycliffe Stutchbury (known as Winky) at Cambridge where they studied architecture before setting off on their travels around America together during the 1950s.  Wycliffe continued his career as an architect in San Francisco.