Eric Ravilious

Eric Ravilious
Born	Eric William Ravilious (1903-06-22)22 June 1903 Acton, London, England
Died	2 September 1942(1942-09-02) (aged 39) Kaldadarnes, Iceland (last known)
Education	Eastbourne Grammar School Eastbourne School of Art Royal College of Art
Known for	Watercolour painting, design, woodcuts
Spouse	Tirzah Garwood

Eric William Ravilious (22 July 1903 – 2 September 1942) was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He grew up in Sussex, and is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs, Castle Hedingham and other English landscapes, which examine English landscape and vernacular art with an off-kilter, modernist sensibility and clarity. He served as a war artist, and was the first British war artist to die on active service in World War II when the aircraft he was in was lost off Iceland.^[1][2][3]

Early life and education

Eric William Ravilious was born on 22 July 1903 in Churchfield Road, Acton, London, the son of Emma (née Ford) and Frank Ravilious.^[4][5] While he was still a small child the family moved to Eastbourne in Sussex, where his parents ran an antiques shop.^[6]

Ravilious was educated at Eastbourne Municipal Secondary School for Boys, from September 1914 to December 1919.

In 1925 Ravilious received a travelling scholarship to Italy and visited Florence, Siena, and the hill towns of Tuscany.^[9]

Career and marriage

Following this he began teaching part-time at the Eastbourne School of Art, and from 1930 taught (also part-time) at the Royal College of Art.^[11] In the same year he married Eileen Lucy "Tirzah" Garwood, also an artist and engraver, whom he met whilst her tutor at Eastbourne College of Art.^[12][13] They had three children: John Ravilious (1935–2014); the photographer James Ravilious (1939–1999); and Anne Ullmann, née Ravilious (b. 1941), editor of books on her parents and their work.^[14]

In 1928 Ravilious, Bawden and Charles Mahoney painted a series of murals at Morley College in south London on which they worked for a whole year.^[15] Their work was described by J. M. Richards as "sharp in detail, clean in colour, with an odd humour in their marionette-like figures" and "a striking departure from the conventions of mural painting at that time", but was destroyed by bombing in 1941.^[15][1]

Between 1930 and 1932 Ravilious and Garwood lived in Hammersmith, west London, where there is a blue plaque on the wall of their house at the corner of Upper Mall and Weltje Road. The building looks out onto The Boat Race course, and the couple held bathing and boat-race parties.^[12] When Ravilious and Bawden graduated from the RCA they began exploring the Essex countryside in search of rural subjects to paint. Bawden rented Brick House in Great Bardfield as a base and when he married Charlotte Epton, a fellow RCA art student, his father bought it for him as a wedding present. Ravilious and Garwood lodged in Brick House with the Bawdens until 1934 when they purchased Bank House at Castle Hedingham,^[16] which is now also marked by a blue plaque. There were eventually several other Great Bardfield Artists.

In 1933 Ravilious and Garwood painted murals at the

Ravilious engraved more than 400 illustrations and drew over 40 lithographic designs for books and publications during his lifetime.^[20] His first commission, in 1926, was to illustrate a novel for Jonathan Cape. He went on to produce work both for large companies such as the Lanston Monotype Corporation and smaller, less commercial publishers, such as the Golden Cockerel Press^[10] (for whom he illustrated an edition of Twelfth Night),^[21] the Curwen Press and the Cresset Press.^[10] His woodcut of two Victorian gentlemen playing cricket has appeared on the front cover of every edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack since 1938.^[22] His style of wood-engraving was greatly influenced by that of Thomas Bewick, whom both he and Bawden admired.^[10] Ravilious in turn influenced other wood engravers, such as Gwenda Morgan who also depicted scenes in the South Downs and was commissioned by the Golden Cockerel Press.

In the mid-1930s Ravilious took up lithography, making a print of Newhaven Harbour for the "Contemporary Lithographs" scheme, and a set of full-page lithographs, mostly of shop interiors, for a book called High Street, with text by J. M. Richards.^[23] Following a trip in a submarine in the war he produced a series of lithographs on Submarines, a set of 12,^[24] one of which was entitled Submarine Dream.^[25][26]

Design

In February 1936, Ravilious held his second exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery and again it was a success, with 28 out of the 36 paintings shown being sold.

Other popular Ravilious designs included the Alphabet mug of 1937,[27] and the china sets, Afternoon Tea (1938), Travel (1938), and Garden Implements (1939), plus the Boat Race Day cup in 1938.^[28] Production of Ravilious' designs continued into the 1950s, with the coronation mug design being posthumously reworked for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953.^[29]

He also undertook glass designs for Stuart Crystal in 1934, graphic advertisements for London Transport and furniture work for Dunbar Hay in 1936.^[28] Ravilious and Bawden were both active in the campaign by the Artists' International Association to support the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Throughout 1938 and 1939, Ravilious spent time working in Wales, the south of France and at Aldeburgh to prepare works for his third one-man show, which was held at the Arthur Tooth & Sons Gallery in 1939.^[16]

Watercolour

Apart from a brief experimentation with oils in 1930 – inspired by the works of Johan Zoffany – Ravilious painted almost entirely in watercolour.^[21] He was especially inspired by the landscape of the South Downs around Beddingham. He frequently returned to Furlongs, the cottage of Peggy Angus. He said that his time there "altered my whole outlook and way of painting, I think because the colour of the landscape was so lovely and the design so beautifully obvious ... that I simply had to abandon my tinted drawings".^[30] Some of his works, such as Tea at Furlongs, were painted there.

Murals

Ravilious was commissioned to paint murals on the walls of the tea room on Victoria Pier at Colwyn Bay in 1934.^[31] After the pier's partial collapse, these were thought unrecoverable, but, as of March 2018, one had been recovered in pieces and it was hoped that a second could also be saved, along with parts of another by Mary Adshead, from the pier's auditorium.^[31]

Conwy Council's conservation officer, Huw Davies, said:^[31]

Only two murals of his survive, and this was the last one in position. It's historically very significant. His work decorated the walls of the tea room and featured an underwater ruin scene with pink and purple seaweed... The murals haven't actually been on show for some time. One wall of the Eric Ravilious work has been lost because of water getting into the building, and the whole thing has been covered over with several coats of paint and plaster. There's a considerable job to do to restore them. For now, they're being stored safely in a dry place... The next stage will be to find a home for them. If the trust succeed in rebuilding the pier, we hope they could return one day.

War artist

Prior to the outbreak of

In February 1940, he reported to the Royal Naval barracks at Chatham Dockyard. While based there he painted ships at the dockside, barrage balloons at Sheerness and other coastal defences. Dangerous Work at Low Tide, 1940 depicts bomb disposal experts approaching a German magnetic mine on Whitstable Sands. Two members of the team Ravilious painted were later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.^[35]

On 24 May 1940 Ravilious sailed to Norway aboard

In early 1942, Ravilious was posted to York but shortly afterwards was allowed to return home to Shalford when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.^[14] There he worked on his York paintings and requested a posting to a nearby RAF base while Garwood recovered from a mastectomy. He spent a short time at RAF Debden before moving to RAF Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire. At Sawbridgeworth he began flying regularly in the de Havilland Tiger Moths based at the flying school there and would sketch other planes in flight from the rear cockpit of the plane.^[36]

Death

On 28 August 1942 Ravilious flew to Reykjavík in Iceland and then travelled on to RAF Kaldadarnes. The day he arrived there, 1 September, a Lockheed Hudson aircraft had failed to return from a patrol. The next morning three aircraft were despatched at dawn to search for the missing plane and Ravilious opted to join one of the crews. The aircraft he was on also failed to return and after four days of further searching, the RAF declared Ravilious and the four-man crew lost in action. His body was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial.^[36][38] The log book belonging to the pilot of the fatal flight, in the possession of the pilot's daughter, with a hand-written note "failed to return", and an RAF official stamp "death presumed", was shown on the BBC Television programme Antiques Roadshow in March 2020.^[39]

In 1946, Ravilious's widow, Tirzah, married Anglo-Irish radio producer Henry Swanzy, having been introduced by Peggy Angus.^[14]

Collections and exhibitions

Ravilious only held three solo exhibitions during his life from which the majority of works were bought by private collectors. Other than the large number of war-time pictures held by the

A touring exhibition organised by the Victor Batte-Lay Trust named "Eric Ravilious 1903 – 1942" was held at The Minories, Colchester in 1972.^[40] The Minories held an exhibition on graphic art and book illustration in 2009, named "Graphic art and the art of illustration" which featured Ravilious.^[41]

In April to August 2015 the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London held what it called "the first major exhibition to survey" his watercolours, with more than 80 on display.^[42][43]

In 2017, The Towner Gallery marked the 75th anniversary of Ravilious' death with Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship,^[44] a exhibition that explored the relationships and working collaborations between Ravilious and a group of his friends and affiliates, including Paul Nash, John Nash, Enid Marx, Barnett Freedman, Tirzah Garwood, Edward Bawden, Thomas Hennell, Douglas Percy Bliss, Peggy Angus, Diana Low and Helen Binyon.

In 2021, Mackerel Sky, a painting by Ravilious that had been 'missing' for 82 years, was found and the new owner has lent it to the Hastings Contemporary art gallery for its Seaside Modern Exhibition.^[45][46]

From September 2021 to January 2022, the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes held an exhibition titled Eric Ravilious: Downland Man which featured loans from a number of National Museums including the V&A, the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum as well as paintings held in private collections.^[47][48]

To mark its reopening as The Arc in February 2022 the former Winchester Discovery Centre staged Extraordinary Everyday: The Art & Design of Eric Ravilious. The exhibition was curated for the Hampshire Cultural Trust and featured wood engravings, watercolours, books, ceramics and lithographs.^[49][50]

In 2022 he was the subject of a film Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War written and directed by Margy Kinmonth.^[1][19]

References

1. ^ Arts and Industry magazine, whose associate editor was Ravilious' colleague Robert Harling, commented in 1940: "We cannot help thinking that this may seem an odder war to posterity when they see it reproduced in the drawings of Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious.^[33]

Sources

• Constable, Freda (1982). The England of Eric Ravilious. London: Scolar Press.

Further reading

• James Russell, Ravilious: Wood Engravings (edited by Tim Mainstone), Mainstone Press, Norwich (2019);
  ISBN 978-0957666559
• Andy Friend, Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship (2017).
  ISBN 978-0500239551
• Jeremy Greenwood, Ravilious Engravings (2008. Wood Lea Press) [catalogue raisonnee]
• Alan Powers, James Russell, Eric Ravilious: the Story of High Street (2008)
• Alan Powers, Oliver Green. Away We Go! Advertising London's Transport: Eric Ravilious & Edward Bawden (2006)
• Alan Powers, Eric Ravilious: Imagined Realities (2004)
• Richard Morphet. Eric Ravilious in Context (2002)
• Submarine dream: Lithographs and letters (1996)
• ISBN 978-0903685382
• ISBN 978-0-7188-2920-9
• R. Dalrymple. Ravilious and Wedgwood (1986. London)
• Eric Ravilious, 1903–42: A Re-assessment of his Life and Work (exh. cat. by P. Andrew, Eastbourne Towner A.G. & Local History Museum) (1986)
• Helen Binyon, Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist (Frederic C. Beil, Publisher, New York, 1983)
• Freda Constable and Sue Simon, The England of Eric Ravilious (1982)
• J. M. Richards, The Wood Engravings of Eric Ravilious (1972)
• Anne Ullmann (ed.) Ravilious at War: the complete work of Eric Ravilious, September 1939 – September 1942, contributions from Barry and Saria Viney, Christopher Whittick and Simon Lawrence, foreword by
  ISBN 0-948375-70-1
• James Russell, Ravilious in Pictures: Sussex and the Downs (edited by Tim Mainstone), Mainstone Press, Norwich (2009);
  ISBN 9780955277733
• James Russell, Ravilious in Pictures: The War Paintings (edited by Tim Mainstone), Mainstone Press, Norwich (2010);
  ISBN 978-0955277740
• James Russell, Ravilious in Pictures: A Country Life (edited by Tim Mainstone), Mainstone Press, Norwich (2010);
  ISBN 978-0955277764
• James Russell, Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist (edited by Tim Mainstone), Mainstone Press, Norwich (2012);
  ISBN 978-0955277788
• James Russell, Ravilious: Submarine (edited by Tim Mainstone), Mainstone Press, Norwich (2013);
  ISBN 978-0955277795
• James Russell, Eric Ravilious Downland Man, with a preface by David Dawson, Wiltshire Museum (2021),
  ISBN 978-0-947723-17-0
• Richard Knott, The Sketchbook War. The History Press, 2013.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Eric Ravilious.

• 74 artworks by or after Eric Ravilious at the Art UK site
• Photograph of Ravilious
• Ravilious images at Art Republic