Eric Ravilious

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Eric Ravilious: Taurus design for the month of May in the Lanston Company Almanac (1929), woodcut. The large white figure shows the Long Man of Wilmington .

Eric Ravilious (born July 22, 1903 in London , † September 2, 1942 in Iceland ) was a British painter , designer , book illustrator and xylograph .

life and work

Early years

Ravilious moved his family to Eastbourne , Sussex at an early age , where his father owned an antiques shop and Ravilious was a Grammar School student. In 1919, due to his graduation from the Senior Local Examinations with a focus on drawing, he won a first scholarship to study at the Eastbourne School of Art and in 1922 a second scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London, where he stayed until 1925. Here he studied with Paul Nash from 1924 to 1925 and made friends with fellow students Edward Bawden and Douglas Percy Bliss as well as other contemporaries, including Henry Moore , Barnett Freedman and Raymond Coxon. A travel grant to study the Old Masters enabled him to travel to Italy in 1925 , where he visited Florence and Siena in the spring . That same year he was proposed by Nash as a member of the Society of Wood Engravers. During this time he received orders from publishers for xylography, such as an illustration of the novel Desert, a Legend by Martin Armstrong , which was published in 1926 by Jonathan Cape, and worked as a teacher at the Eastbourne School of Art. Ravilious also had projects with the Cresset Press and Curwen Press and the Lanston Company , now Monotype Corporation . In 1928 he worked with Edward Bawden on a commission for a mural in the dining room of Morley College in London .

Marriage and first solo exhibition

In 1930 Ravilious married the artist Eileen Lucy "Tirzah" Garwood (1908–1951), who had been a student of Ravilious at Eastbourne School of Art, and taught part-time at the Royal College of Art. Garwood was considered talented and accomplished on her own Rights existing woman as an artist. She later assisted her husband with his murals. First the couple moved to Earl's Court , then to Hammersmith . The year 1930 gave Ravilious one of the rare opportunities for artistic experiences outside of his work. In an exhibition organized by Sir Philip Sassoon , he saw pictures by the British painter Johann Zoffany , along with other pictures from the 18th century, and was, as his friend Edward Bawden remarked, "entranced". After a few attempts at oil painting, he left it again because he felt the technique too much like “toothpaste”. In 1932, Bawden and Ravilious decided to lease a house in the country in order to escape the big city of London with family and friends and to paint. They chose Brick House in Great Bardfield, Essex. In the same year Ravilious stayed in Wiltshire and painted several watercolors in Oare, near Marlborough , such as Walled Garden and Strawberry Nets . He made the xylographs for Twelfth Night for a volume published in the Golden Cockerel Press . The Zwemmer Gallery , London, in 1933 hosted the first solo exhibition of watercolors and Ravilious was working on a mural for the Midland Hotel in Morecambe .

Designs, lithography and drafts

In 1935, after the birth of his two children, John and Anne, he moved to Essex and lived in Castle Hedingham . In 1936 he had his second solo exhibition of watercolors in the Zwemmer Gallery and he began to work with lithography. For Wedgwood he made designs for pottery and chinaware. Very known as the alphabet designs on drinking cups, the first of which as a coronation cup (coronation mug) Edwards VIII. Was made for the British Pavilion at the International 1937 World's Fair in Paris, he made designs and woodcuts for the Nonesuch Press published and 1938 edition of Gilbert White's Selborne and worked on lithographic illustrations for High Street . Ravilious also worked on ceramic, furniture and glass designs. In 1938 Ravilious set out for painting expeditions to Aldeburgh, Bristol , Kent and Wales . In May 1939 he had an exhibition at Tooth's Galley, London. He spent the summer months on the Downs in the south of England, exploring the geoglyphs Cerne Abbas Giant , Long Man of Wilmington , George III carved into the limestone . at Weymouth as well as Uffington White Horse and Westbury White Horse in watercolor. In August 1939 his son James (1939–1999), who became a well-known English photographer, was born.

Last years

After the outbreak of World War II , Ravilious was made an official war painter with the rank of Honorary Captain of the Royal Marines in January 1940 . During his first service as a martial artist, he painted in the Royal Naval Barracks in Chatham and Sheerness , before setting out for the Arctic on the HMS Highlander in May 1940 . On the HMS Dolphin, at Gosport and the fighting on the coast of Newhaven , he painted pictures on the subject of submarines . He spent the winter of 1940/41 in Essex to work on a commissioned series of lithographs about submarines. He also worked on a project for a book about his watercolors of geoglyphs, which he created in the Downs in the summer. However, both projects never came about. In 1941 he spent another six months with the Royal Navy in Dover , where he painted the bombing of the war battles on the English Channel . In October he went to Scotland , where he painted the Forth Bridge and got his first experience with aircraft with the Fleet Air Arm . In March 1942 he first painted Lysanders in the Plains of York , followed by stays with the Royal Air Force in York and the RAF locations in Debden, Sawbridgeworth and Weston Zoyland. In late August, Ravilious left for an RAF location in Iceland. On September 2, while he was watching a rescue operation from an air-to-sea rescue plane in order to put it on paper, the plane crashed.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1933: Zwemmer Gallery , Watercolors
  • 1936: Zwemmer Gallery, Watercolors
  • 1939: Arthur Tooth & Sons

Works (selection)

  • 1929: Taurus design for May in the Lanston Monotype Corporation Ltd. Almanch , Monotype Corporation Limited (1982)
  • 1932: Strawberry Nets , watercolor and pencil, 35.6 × 45.7 cm, private collection (1982). Fig.
  • 1934: Furlongs , watercolor and pencil, 43.2 × 50.8 cm, private collection (1982). Fig.
  • 1935: The Greenhouse: Cyclamen and Tomatoes , watercolor and pencil, 47 × 59.7 cm, Tate Gallery , London. Fig.
  • 1934: Wiltshire Landscape , watercolor and pencil, 41.9 × 54.6 cm, private collection (1982). Fig.
  • 1938: Lifeboat , watercolor and pencil, 43.2 × 50.8 cm, private collection (1982).
  • 1939: Train Landscape , watercolor and pencil, 44.4 × 54.6 cm, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum Aberdeen (1982). Fig.
  • 1939: The Westbury Horse , watercolor and pencil, 44.4 × 53.3 cm, Ravilious family. Fig.
  • 1940: HMS Ark Royal in Action , watercolor and pencil, 45.1 × 57.2 cm, Trustees of the Imperial War Museum , London. Fig.
  • 1940: Submarine in Dry Dock , watercolor and pencil, 43 × 57 cm, Tate Gallery , London. Fig.
  • 1941: Bombing the Channel Ports , with the Sound Mirror at Abbot's Cliff. Watercolor and pencil, Imperial War Museum, London.

literature

  • Freda Constable / Sue Simon: The England of Eric Ravilious . Scolar Press, London 1982, ISBN 0-85967-580-7

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Freda Constable / Sue Simon: The England of Eric Ravilious . Scolar Press, London 1982, p. 14
  2. ↑ Freda Constable / Sue Simon: The England of Eric Ravilious , p. 17
  3. ↑ Freda Constable / Sue Simon, p. 21
  4. ↑ Freda Constable / Sue Simon, p. 22
  5. ↑ Freda Constable / Sue Simon, p. 29
  6. ↑ Eric Ravilious at Wedgwood (English)
  7. ↑ Freda Constable / Sue Simon, p. 29 f.
  8. ↑ Freda Constable / Sue Simon, p. 31 f.

Web links

Commons : Eric Ravilious  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Ravilious, Eric
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British painter, designer, book illustrator and xylograph
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH September 2, 1942
Place of death Iceland