Eric Ravilious

Eric William Ravilious (22 July 1903 – 2 September 1942) was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He grew up in East Sussex, and is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs 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 died when the aircraft he was in was lost off Iceland.
Life.
Ravilious was born on 22 July 1903 in Churchfield Road, Acton, London, the son of Frank Ravilious and his wife Emma ("née" Ford). While he was still a small child the family moved to Eastbourne in Sussex, where his parents ran an antique shop.
Ravilious was educated at Eastbourne Grammar School. In 1919 he won a scholarship to Eastbourne School of Art and in 1922 another to study at the Design School at the Royal College of Art. There he became close friends with Edward Bawden (his 1930 painting of Bawden at work is in the collection of the college) and, from 1924, studied under Paul Nash. Nash, an enthusiast for wood-engraving, encouraged him in the technique, and was impressed enough by his work to propose him for membership of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1925, and helped him to get commissions.
In 1925 Ravilious received a travelling scholarship to Italy and visited Florence, Siena, and the hill towns of Tuscany. 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. In the same year he married Eileen Lucy "Tirzah" Garwood, also an artist and engraver, whom he met at Eastbourne College of Art. They had three children: John Ravilious (1935–2014); the photographer James Ravilious (1939–1999); and Anne Ullmann (1941– ), editor of books on her parents and their work.
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. 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.
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. 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, 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, which is now also marked by a blue plaque. There were eventually several other Great Bardfield Artists.
In 1933 Ravilious and his wife painted murals at the Midland Hotel in Morecambe. In November 1933, Ravilious held his first solo exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery in London, titled "An Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings". Twenty of the 37 works displayed were sold.
A 1933 painting of Ravilious and Edward Bawden, by Michael Rothenstein, was acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 2012.
Printmaking and illustration.
Ravilious engraved more than 400 illustrations and drew over 40 lithographic designs for books and publications during his lifetime. 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 Corporation and smaller, less commercial publishers, such as the Golden Cockerel Press (for whom he illustrated an edition of "Twelfth Night"), the Curwen Press and the Cresset Press. His woodcut of two Victorian gentlemen playing cricket has appeared on the front cover of every edition of "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack" since 1938. His style of wood-engraving was greatly influenced by that of Thomas Bewick, whom both he and Bawden admired. 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. Following a trip in a submarine in the war he produced a series of lithographs on "Submarines", a set of 12, one of which was entitled "Submarine Dream"
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. This exhibition also led to a commission from Wedgwood for ceramic designs. His work for them included a commemorative mug to mark the abortive coronation of Edward VIII; the design was revised for the coronation of George VI.
Other popular Ravilious designs included the "Alphabet" mug of 1937, and the china sets, "Afternoon Tea" (1938), "Travel" (1938), and "Garden Implements" (1939), plus the "Boat Race Day" cup in 1938. Production of Ravilious' designs continued into the 1950s, with the coronation mug design being posthumously reworked for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953.
He also undertook glass designs for Stuart Crystal in 1934, graphic advertisements for London Transport and furniture work for Dunbar Hay in 1936. 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.
Watercolour.
Apart from a brief experimentation with oils in 1930 – inspired by the works of Johan Zoffany – Ravilious painted almost entirely in watercolour. 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". 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. 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.
Conwy Council's conservation officer, Huw Davies, said:
War artist.
Prior to the outbreak of WWII Ravilious aligned himself with anti-fascist causes, including lending his work to the 1937 exhibition "Artists Against Fascism". He considered joining the military as a rifleman but was deterred by friends; he joined a Royal Observer Corps post in Hedingham at the outbreak of war. He was then accepted as a full-time salaried artist by the War Artists' Advisory Committee in December 1939. He was given the rank of Honorary Captain in the Royal Marines and assigned to the Admiralty.
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.
On 24 May 1940 Ravilious sailed to Norway aboard HMS "Highlander" which was escorting HMS "Glorious" and the force being sent to recapture Narvik. "Highlander" returned to Scapa Flow before departing for Norway a second time on 31 May 1940. From the deck of "Highlander", Ravilious painted scenes of both HMS "Ark Royal" and HMS "Glorious" in action. "HMS Glorious in the Arctic" depicts Hawker Hurricanes and Gloster Gladiators landing on the deck of "Glorious" as part of the evacuation of forces from Norway on 7/8 June. The following evening "Glorious" was sunk, with great loss of life.
On returning from Norway, Ravilious was posted to Portsmouth from where he painted submarine interiors at Gosport and coastal defences at Newhaven. After Ravilious's third child was born in April 1941, the family moved out of Bank House to Ironbridge Farm near Shalford, Essex. The rent on this property was paid partly in cash and partly in paintings, which are among the few private works Ravilious completed during the war. In October 1941 Ravilious transferred to Scotland, having spent six months based at Dover. In Scotland, Ravilious first stayed with John Nash and his wife at their cottage on the Firth of Forth and painted convoy subjects from the signal station on the Isle of May. At the Royal Naval Air Station in Dundee, Ravilious drew, and sometimes flew in, the Supermarine Walrus seaplanes based there.
In early 1942, Ravilious was posted to York but shortly afterwards was allowed to return home to Shalford when his wife was taken ill. There he worked on his York paintings and requested a posting to a nearby RAF base while Garwood recovered. 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.
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. 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.
In 1946 Ravilious's widow married Anglo-Irish radio producer Henry Swanzy.
Exhibitions.
A touring exhibition organised by the Victor Batte-Lay Trust named "Eric Ravilious 1903 – 1942" was held at The Minories, Colchester in 1972. The Minories held an exhibition on graphic art and book illustration in 2009, named "Graphic art and the art of illustration" which featured Ravilious.
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.
Works by Eric Ravilious are held by the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Fry Art Gallery, The Faringdon Collection at Buscot Park, The Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art, The Priseman Seabrook Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The largest collection is held at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne.
The Towner Gallery marked the 75th anniversary of Ravilious' death with "Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship", a major exhibition created with guest curator Andy Friend that explored the significant relationships and working collaborations between Ravilious and an important group of 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.