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.
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 antiques shop.
Ravilious was educated at Eastbourne Municipal Secondary School for Boys, from September 1914 to December 1919. It was later renamed as 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 a close friend of 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, née Ravilious (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. During 1939, Ravilious painted a series of watercolours of chalk hill figures in the English landscape. The Leicester Galleries sold three of these paintings to British public collections, the Tate, the Victoria & Albert Museum and Aberdeen Art Gallery.
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 Monotype 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.