The life and times of Eric Ravilious
July 22, 1903
Born in Acton, West London
1919 Attends the Eastbourne School of Art, East Sussex
1922 Awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art
1925 Elected to the Society of Wood Engravers
1927 Illustrates Nicholas Breton’s
The Twelve Moneths; exhibits with Edward Bawden and Douglas Percy Bliss at St George’s Gallery, London
1928 Commissioned with Bawden to paint a mural for Morley College
February 1930 Stanley Baldwin unveils Morley College murals; Ravilious marries Tirzah Garwood on July 5
1932 Designs Twelfth Night for Golden Cockerel Press; moves to Brick House, Great Bardfield, Essex
1933 Makes engravings for The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta, murals for Midland Railway Hotel in Morecambe, Lancashire, and, in November, stages a one-man exhibition at Zwemmer’s Gallery, London
1934 Rents Bank House, Castle Hedingham, Essex
1936 Designs Edward VIII Coronation Mug for Wedgwood
1937 Engravings for The COUNTRY LIFE Cookery Book; designs exhibit and catalogue for British Pavilion, Paris International Exhibition
1938 Illustrates Nonesuch Press edition
of The Natural History of Selborne
December 1939 Appointed Official War Artist attached to the Admiralty
1940 Working at Chatham, Sheerness, Whitstable and Grimsby, May–june, with HMS Highlander to Norway; drawings for submarine interiors at Portsmouth
1941 Submarine lithographs exhibited at Leicester Galleries, London
1942 Spring, with the RAF in Yorkshire, Essex and Hertfordshire; August 28 posted to RAF Kaldadarnes, Iceland
September 2, 1942 Reported missing
took lodgings at Brick House, Great Bardfield, and, for the next few years, the Essex countryside, together with the South Downs, provided Ravilious with material for his landscapes.
The work of the two men was quietly revolutionary; they rejected the fluidity of watercolour favoured by Sargent and Alfred Rich in favour of a more austere approach inspired in part by the work of Francis Towne and John Sell Cotman. For Ravilious, the discipline of wood-engraving—its clarity cutting straight to the core—undoubtedly played a part in refining his vision. Telegraph poles, waterwheels, barbed wire—details that others rejected as unsightly—became for him vital points in the living landscape. Similarly, garden tools, household utensils, the pattern of a lodginghouse wallpaper or the moquette of a thirdclass railway carriage were all capable of supplying material for pencil, brush or graver.
In the exhibition ‘Extraordinary Everyday’, currently on show in Winchester, Hampshire, curator James Russell explores Ravilious’s fascination with the quotidian.
The artist was fortunate in catching the tail end of luxury book production before the effects of the Wall Street crash took their toll, producing engravings for the Monotype Corporation’s Almanack 1929 and the Golden Cockerel’s Twelfth Night. Much of his later engraved work was commissioned through the Curwen Press by such bodies as Southern Railways, London Transport and COUNTRY LIFE, as well as Whitaker’s—he produced the iconic cover image of top-hatted cricketers for Wisden’s Almanack. One final glory was Ravilious and Nonesuch Press’s two-volume edition of Gilbert White’s The Natural History of Selborne, published in 1938, the same year that COUNTRY LIFE published High Street, his earliest essay in auto-lithography. Among the various shop fronts depicted is a newsagent’s window filled with fireworks in anticipation of November 5. The artist’s delight in pyrotechnics had already been exuberantly revealed in his ill-fated mural for the Midland Railway Hotel at Morecambe, Lancashire, as well as in his design for Wedgwood’s Edward VIII Coronation Mug and his cover design for the Guide to the British Pavilion at the Paris World Fair.
Late in 1939, Ravilious was appointed an Official War Artist attached to the Admiralty and posted to Chatham. The following spring, he was assigned to HMS Highlander for a voyage to Norway and the Arctic Circle. His reaction was ecstatic: ‘I’ve done drawings of the Midnight Sun and the hills of the Chankly Bore… it is about the first time since the war that I have felt peace of mind or desire to work.’ The result was some of his finest watercolours, HMS Glorious in the Arctic (1940) and HMS Ark Royal in Action among them. On his return, he spent time at Portsmouth drawing submarine interiors, but the lure of the Arctic remained and, when the chance of a posting to Iceland occurred, he jumped at it. He was there for only six days before that fatal flight, the only tangible vestige of which was the wheel of a Hudson aircraft washed ashore six days later. ‘Extraordinary Everyday: The Art & Design of Eric Ravilious’, Hampshire Cultural Trust, is at The Arc in Winchester, from March 4– May 15 (www.arcwinchester.org.uk)