Tramp Steamers, Seaman and Sailor Town: Jack Sullivan's Paintings of Old Cardiff Docklands [Paperback]

Jack Sullivan is a remarkable artist who has led an adventurous life—as a policeman, seaman, soldier, naval intelligence officer and 'proud citizen on Cardiff'. For more than fifty years, he painted images of multi-ethnic Cardiff, its characters and history. Central themes include the docks, seamen, street life and forgotten heroes of the two World Wars. Detailed, vibrant and colourful, these paintings invite the viewer to look and look again. Jack’s art is that of a witness, a close observer of life. He paints about things that matter, so that people will see and remember. From 1948 to 1955, as a British Transport Policeman, Jack walked the beat, often at night, patrolling Cardiff docklands. As he strolled through the city streets, he made some 800 sketches, many of them of a colourful world of prostitutes, drunken seamen, gamblers and petty criminals. In the 1980s and 90s, he returned to these sketches and re-worked some of them as oil paintings, setting them in the latter Victorian and Edwardian eras. A selection of these images, plus some of his paintings of Cardiff seamen at war, is presented in this book. Tramp Steamers, Seamen and Sailor Town will be of interest to anyone interested in the history of Cardiff, visual art and cultural studies.

In an article in the South Wales Echo in July 1997, Jack Sullivan, with characteristic humour, expressed what his art is all about: 'If I painted bits of dog’s mess on a plate and called it The Meaning of Life, I’d instantly become known as a controversial modern artist. But I can’t be doing that. Real life is what it’s all about for me. The people in my paintings actually existed, and the scenes that I depict actually happened. That means a hell of a lot to me and, I hope, to many other people too.'

Glenn Jordan is Director of Butetown History and Arts Centre in Cardiff and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Glamorgan. He has published widely on cultural studies, photography and race. His books include Cultural Politics: Class, Gender, Race and the Postmodern World (Blackwell, 1995), which he co-authored with Chris Weedon; Down the Bay: Picture Post, Humanist Photography and Images of 1950s Cardiff (Butetown History and Arts Centre, 2001); and Fractured Horizon: A Landscape of Memory (BHAC, 2003), co-authored with Mathew Manning (photographer) and Patti Flynn. He is currently writing a book on photography and cultural studies.