Life as an artist ) (scene of the sheep-shearing in
Thomas Hardy's "Far from the madding crowd") ) in Cairo Tyndale was born and brought up in the medieval town of
Bruges in
Belgium, and trained initially at the "Bruges Academy of Art". When he was 16, his family returned to England, settling in
Bath in
Somerset for several years. At the age of 18, he returned to Belgium, studying art first at the
Academy in
Antwerp, then moving to Paris where he studied under
Léon Bonnat and
Jan van Beers. In the 1870s, At the age of 21, circumstances obliged him to return to England in order to make a living from his art. He painted portraits and
genre works in
oils, and married a Miss Evelyn Dorothea Barnard. Until about 1890, he was known mainly as a portrait painter, but then moved to
Haslemere in
Surrey, started to teach art and switched to
watercolour painting. He eventually commissioned the building of an
Arts and Crafts movement-style house for himself called "
Broad Dene", located on
Hill Road in the town. Tyndale travelled to the
Netherlands (with friend and fellow artist
Claude Hayes), then to
Portugal, where he held a successful exhibition in
Porto. Subsequently, he painted in England (in a sketching group organised by
Helen Allingham near
Maidstone in Kent), and abroad in
Morocco,
Tunisia,
Egypt,
Lebanon,
Syria,
Sicily,
Italy and
Rothenburg, Bavaria (a town he described as "a little paradise for sketchers"). Tyndale painted landscapes and buildings in the
west country of England, some of which had inspired
Thomas Hardy's "
Wessex" novels. Some of these locations were suggested by Hardy himself, who praised the "fidelity, both in form and colour" of Tyndale's work. "
The Studio" magazine commented on the "excellent draughtsmanship and the care with which architectural details are rendered".
Societies, exhibitions and legacy Tyndale was a member of the
Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours (RI), a founding member of the "
Haslemere Art Society" and president of the latter between 1930 and 1932. Tyndale exhibited his works at various venues including the
Royal Academy, the
RI gallery in
Piccadilly and Dowdeswell Galleries in London. His main artistic influences were his friend, the watercolourist Claude Hayes and, to a lesser extent, Helen Allingham Tyndale left three sizeable diaries, in which he recorded his travels, including correspondence with friends and family, postcards, photographs and some self-portraits. ==Bibliography==