Eric Ravilious: Imagined Realities

of his period. He was a painter of watercolours and murals, a book illustrator in wood

and design. He has been a guest

engraving and lithography, and a designer of transfer-ware pottery. He applied a dry

curator at Kettles Yard and the

and precise style of working to imaginative and romantic subject matter from the world

Design Museum, and is a Professor

around him and from his imaginative transformations of the art and imagery of the

in Architecture and Cultural History

past. From 1940 he was an Official War Artist, painting memorable pictures of ships,

at the University of Greenwich in

aircraft and coastal defences before his tragic death in a flying accident off Iceland.

east London. He is also a watercolour painter and a printmaker. Dr Powers was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2008.

Eric Ravilious . Imagined Realities includes illustrations of many previously unpublished paintings, including a number from private collections, as well as surveying his other artistic activities. The text draws on many letters and other documents, again previously unpublished, and is the most comprehensive account of Ravilious’s career ever published. It also attempts to position Ravilious in relation to English art of his time, and more recent critical and cultural issues.

His letters show a constant concern

Imagined Realities

on twentieth-century art, architecture

‘Ravilious has attracted interest not

.

The English artist Eric Ravilious (1903–42) is now one of the most popular artists

Eric Ravilious

Dr Alan Powers writes and lectures

that people should be able to find

only as an attractive artist, but as one whose work carries ambiguous meanings that offer new ways of understanding the experience of Englishness during the middle years of the century, connecting landscape and politics through art….

the country that suits them. One could speculate that he was engaged in what might now be termed a project to “re-enchant” the world’.

Eric Ravilious Imagined Realities This book was awarded third prize in the Art Newspaper & AXA Art Exhibition Catalogue Competition, 2004.

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

Philip Wilson Publishers 6 Salem Road London W2 4BU www.philip-wilson.co.uk

Cover illustration: Tiger Moth, 1942 (detail). Tate

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Eric Ravilious

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Eric Ravilious . Imagined Realities

ALAN POWERS

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM PHILIP WILSON PUBLISHERS

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD

4

.

INTRODUCTION MURALS

7

11

ILLUSTRATION DESIGN

18

22

WATERCOLOURS

33

WAR PAINTINGS

46

CONCLUSION:

Imagined and Imaginal Realities 58 NOTES

66

.

PLATES

69

BIBLIOGRAPHY CATALOGUE

140 142

CHRONOLOGY

143

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LENDERS .

144

144

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how good the English water-

some extent all men attempt to relive his fathers’ lives and

colourists are, you can’t really see painting’ said

redeem their mistakes, then Ravilious’s choice of career was

the American critic Clement Greenberg in an

apt, for he was able to transform Frank’s stifled visual and

interview in 1968.1 He was referring to the late

emotional sensitivity into creative work that was more far-

eighteenth and early nineteenth century painters,

reaching as a form of mission.

F YOU CAN’T SEE

mentioning Thomas Girtin, John Crome, John Sell Cotman

Two small sketchbooks containing drawings made by

and Alexander Cozens. Greenberg was mainly associated

Ravilious when he was at Eastbourne Boy’s Municipal

with the abstract expressionist avant-garde, but he could

Secondary School (later Eastbourne Grammar School for

recognise the continuing value of these artists, whom Eric

Boys) show objects such as a pair of boots or a teapot, care-

Ravilious regarded as his precursors.

fully drawn in pencil outline. Many children draw neatly, but

English art historians have tended to treat Ravilious as a

these few outlines convey a strength that is recognisable

marginal figure, detached from the movements of his time

throughout his career. His parents did not object when the

such as abstraction and surrealism, but Frances Spalding

headmaster suggested that Eric should transfer to East-

begins a recent essay by stating that ‘Eric Ravilious is

bourne College of Art, which he entered in 1919. Good

arguably the greatest British watercolourist of the twentieth

looking, with an ability and enthusiasm for ball games and a

century’.2 The existence of a group of

pleasure in clothes (including fancy

collectors and enthusiasts is evident,

dress) and dancing, Ravilious had the

but may not always serve the needs of objective appraisal, and since there has been little recent reappraisal of

Introduction

twentieth-century British watercolour

social skills required in the 1920s, and never needed to act the outsider, yet a fellow student of this period, John Lake, recalled with his ‘extraordinary,

as a whole, it is hard to develop an argument based on

almost Pan-like charm’, Ravilious ‘always seemed to be

comparison. Even then, one needs to find a way to include

slightly somewhere else, as if he lived a private life which did

Ravilious’s work as a wood engraver and designer. A retro-

not completely coincide with material existence.’ This inner

spective exhibition allows for a comprehensive appraisal and

imaginative world, originating perhaps as a means of escape

this essay assumes that a biographical narrative, developed

from the aspects of home that he could not accept, was

under thematic headings, is the best way to discuss devel-

something Ravilious was able to depend on for inspiration

opment and change, and provide the basis for a broader

throughout his creative life.

interpretation.

In 1922, Ravilious won the single £60 scholarship from

Frank Ravilious, Eric’s father, shifted in his career from

Eastbourne School of Art to the Royal College of Art. His

craftsman to an antique dealer and moved from Acton in

Eastbourne friend Donald Towner joined the College at the

West London, where Eric was born, to Eastbourne. He was

same time, although new friends now entered Ravilious’s

an apprehensive man, obsessed with his own interpretation

life, of whom none was more important than Edward

of the Old Testament, but in the words of Eric’s wife, ‘he

Bawden (1903–89), also a design student, who came, like

liked picnics and jolly times’ as well. Eric was the youngest

him, from a non-conformist, shop-keeping background,

of three surviving children and close to his mother. J. M.

although a rather more normal and financially successful

Richards, who was one of his close friends, believed that the

one, in Braintree, Essex. They became lodgers in the same

family background made Eric ‘wary of involvement for the

house in Redcliffe Road, where Ravilious shared with

rest of his life. He kept his many family troubles to himself;

Douglas Percy Bliss, an Oxford graduate who began

their dramas and impecuniosities, the morning and evening

research for a history of wood engraving and shared his

3

attendance at chapel on Sundays’. If one believes that to

discoveries with his friends. Ravilious was known as ‘The 7

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Boy’, partly because he disliked his first name, and partly because it seemed to suit his youthfulness. The three students discovered the archaism and bright colours of Claud Lovat Fraser, designer of the hugely successful revival of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, which Ravilious saw several times. The French illustrators Jean-Emile Laboureur and Edy Legrand, drawing in the slightly naïve folk-art style of ‘art populaire’, were an inspiration in a similar vein, particularly for Bawden. Barnett Freedman and Enid Marx were students from the painting school who also made their mark in illustration and design in the 1920s, while Bliss wrote the first articles on Ravilious and Bawden in Artwork magazine. All three exchanged facetious letters full of ambition. When Bliss edited the student magazine Gallimaufry in 1925, Ravilious made a design for the cover, showing a bee in the centre of a sharply delineated carnation bloom.

Ravilious and his contemporaries belonged to the generation of the ‘Bright Young Things’. Even before the First World War, British society had eased its restrictive conventions, as Virginia Woolf recalled when she said that ‘in or about December 1910 human character changed’, and old certainties began to disappear.4 Those born after 1900, like Ravilious, had been too young to fight in the War, although some slightly older student contemporaries, such as Henry Moore, had been caught up as young recruits during its final months. Ravilious’s own age group were formed in the relatively relaxed atmosphere of the 1920s, and his work may seem redolent of the Epicureanism of the Sitwells, some of whose books for the publisher George Duckworth were embellished with his covers.5 Like them, he practised a form of detachment that was, in its way, a political commitment to aesthetic perfection, although he was later active in the left-wing Artists’ International Association.

RCA students were encouraged to study in the V&A, whose galleries were accessible by a doorway leading straight from their own College. Influences collected here appear in Ravilious’s scrapbooks and included those listed

by Bliss as ‘popular woodcut and embroideries of Tudor and Stuart periods in their gay, happy-go-lucky freedom of design, exempt from the burdens of academic art – its 8

Teapot from sketch-book, c.1915 Private collection Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn, Eric Ravilious and Anthony Betts in the RCA Common Room, c.1924 Scrapbook, c.1937 Private collection

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The Swimmer, from ‘The Twelve Moneths’ 1927, wood engraving 45 x 100mm

perspective, anatomy, classical composition and the like.’6 In

the college contemporaries who played the most important

the Print Room, he was also able to handle works by the

roles in Ravilious’s later life were Peggy Angus, Percy

watercolour masters he admired. As Bliss wrote later, ‘He

Horton, Raymond Coxon, Geoffrey Rhoades, Helen Binyon

had exquisite taste and sifted with the skill of an anthologist

and Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn. Nash introduced students to a

7

the rare things that could help him in his work.’ Ravilious’s

range of ancient and modern literature and contemporary

scrapbooks, although assembled in later years, tell the

art. He was generous in recommending students to potential

whole story. The artist’s eye brought history into a single

employers such as Oliver Simon at the Curwen Press. As

conspectus, making everything contemporary. This training,

described on p. 37, Nash and his brother John were both

combined with the constant exchange of discovery with

important influences on Ravilious and Bawden as water-

other students, was probably more important than anything

colour painters.

he received from the tutors.

According to Bawden, Ravilious needed to complete his Diploma in two years rather than the usual three, as his scholarship was running out, and chose mural decoration as his special subject. Bawden described his work of 1924, achieved with gesso powder and ordinary colour rather than the reproduction of ancient methods taught by Tristram, as ‘a big gay painting that really had some pretensions to being a mural.’8 An otherwise unfavourable review of the College exhibition included two of his engravings and two designs by Bawden, noting that ‘The work of this designer, and also

Nash started wood engraving in 1919, at a time when the

various contributions by E. W. Ravilious, give promise of

medium was growing rapidly in popularity, with regular

good things to come.9 Ravilious was awarded a travelling

exhibitions and a demand from publishers of books (private

scholarship, spent the summer in Italy. Friends such as

presses and trade) and magazines. Ravilious began making

Bawden, who went to Italy the following year on a scholar-

wood engravings in 1923 and soon followed Nash in

ship, tended to belittle the value of this journey. Ravilious

adopting a white line cut into the solid areas of black. His

had little to show for it, but his later work shows frequent

work was, however, more historically based than his

affinities to painters of the Tuscan quattrocento, most of all

teacher’s, employing a technique of tonal cutting with small

perhaps to the cool planar structuring of Piero della Fran-

strokes that Bliss says was derived from the ‘Manière

cesca, the top pin-up of the 1920s. The scholarship must

Criblée’ prints made on metal plates in Germany in the

also have funded a further year at the college, and in the

sixteenth century. Bawden recalled that Ravilious made

autumn of 1925 Paul Nash, engaged as a part-time visiting

rough drawings onto the block which ‘served only as a guide

tutor, was a strong influence on Ravilious and his friends.

for the real drawing that was done by the graver in the

Nash turned to illustration and graphic design from a mix-

act of cutting into the surface of the boxwood’, resulting in

ture of financial necessity and a belief that artists were best

‘a freedom, liveliness and invention.’11 It was a method

able to introduce fresh ideas. ‘I was fortunate in being there

requiring more than the usual degree of concentration and

during an outbreak of talent’, Nash wrote of his time at the

sureness of touch. The engraving of a Sussex church, which

College, listing Edward Burra, Edward Bawden, Barnett

Ravilious contributed to Gallimaufry, shows this technique

Freedman and Ravilious among the artists and designers,

on the hillside, while the trees are more stylised with over-

along with Enid Marx, Norah Braden, William Chappell and

sized leaves. In this year, on Nash’s recommendation,

Barbara Ker-Seymer in other fields.

10

Apart from Bawden,

Ravilious was elected as an associate member of the Society 9

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Untitled (Sussex Church) 1925, wood engraving 113 x 129mm Untitled (Sleeping Nude) ‘The Mandrake’, title page 1926, wood engraving page size 248 x 178mm

‘Taurus’ from the Lanston Monotype Almanack 1929, wood engraving 100 x 63mm Boy bird-nesting 1927, wood engraving 87 x 102mm

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of Wood Engravers, and was able to participate in their

figure of the Wilmington Giant near Eastbourne (also known

exhibitions, where his work could be seen by publishers. His

as the Long Man of Wilmington) and a figure of Virgo

engravings, together with long lost tile designs and a ‘deco-

holding staves in her hands, in frescoes at San Gimignano by

rative panel’, were exhibited among a range of art school

Bartolo di Fredi of ‘Scenes of the Creation’. This chalk figure

12

works in the British section of the Paris Exhibition of 1925.

appears twice in the Almanack 1929, once male and once

Ravilious’s engravings for the philosophical novel Desert, by

ambiguously female. The text goes on to speculate about its

Martin Armstrong, published by Jonathan Cape in 1926, are

symbolic meaning – is it ‘the Sun-God pushing aside the

recognisably connected to Nash, yet begin to reveal his own

gates of darkness?’ Here is an artist aware of the symbolic

style in their delicacy of cutting and approach to symbolism.

systems of the Renaissance period, and able to mould them

With its small scale and precision of design, wood

to his needs.

engraving lends itself to intensity of image making. Much of

>

what can be said about Ravilious as an engraver would apply

>

>

equally well to many of his contemporaries, but without forcing extra layers of meaning on his audience, Ravilious

The murals at Morley College for Working Men and

had a special ability to convey an inner world of imagination

Women in Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth [pls. 1, 2,

through everyday subjects as well as the

21], which Ravilious and Bawden painted

more poetic scenes, such as the tapestried

between 1928 and 1929, were the gift of the

room with a sleeping nude figure, that was included in Gallimaufry’s successor, The Mandrake, in 1926. Sometimes the effect is

Murals

like Stanley Spencer, as in The Twelve

art dealer Sir Joseph Duveen. The 21-yearold Rex Whistler’s Refreshment Room murals at the Tate Gallery, also funded by Duveen, had been opened in 1926 to considerable

Moneths, 1927, with its awkward bird-nesting boy and its

acclaim. He offered to pay for another similar venture,

swimmer, out of scale with his surroundings but held in a

although the rates of £1 per day were those for a skilled

moment of stillness. With the Almanack 1929, for the

craftsman rather than a fine artist. Charles Aitken, director

Lanston Monotype Corporation, Ravilious reached maturity

of the Tate (then called The National Gallery, Millbank)

as an engraver with an assurance of technique and design.

proposed Morley College as a suitable place. Whistler had

This small book contains a ‘Preface by the Engraver’, the

been a student at the Slade School, whose reputation in fine

only personal statement about his work that Ravilious ever

art was being challenged by the Royal College, and recent

published. It shows a command of the history of symbols, in

graduates of the latter were invited to submit designs.

this case principally those of the Zodiac, and speculates

Morley College, which moved to its present site in 1924, was

about their origins. ‘The sun, in his yearly course through

one of the most imaginative enterprises for adult education

the Ecliptic seemed to be in the position of overseer,

in London, founded in association with the Old Vic Theatre

watching in turn over each of the twelve constellations of the

and its legendary director, Lilian Baylis.

Zodiac’, Ravilious writes, considering how the unpromising

The selection of artists was strongly influenced by

patterns of stars had been dreamed into men and beasts.

William Rothenstein as principal of the Royal College and

‘He inspired and controlled their activities, their influence

when Bawden and Ravilious were chosen (along with their

upon the earth, its crops, and upon man. … A clear starry

contemporary Cyril Mahoney who painted the back wall of

night probably was stimulating to the faith of the Ancient

the concert hall), he recommended that they should indulge

Greek in a way we are not able to realise. He could see with

in ‘fantasy’. Their site, the Refreshment Room, was located

his mind’s eye all the monstrous forms of the gods and

in the basement of a rear addition to a large Georgian

heroes.’

13

Ravilious refers to similarities between the chalk

house designed by the architects Lanchester & Lodge and 11

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Commander of a Submarine looking through a Periscope

The Ward Room (1)

Testing Davis Apparatus

Different Aspects of Submarines

7 ‘Submarine Series’ 1941, lithographs on paper Each 280 x 320mm Imperial War Museum

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8 Coastal Defences 1940, watercolour on paper 45.7 x 60.9cm Imperial War Museum

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12 Doctor Faustus conjuring Mephostopheles 1929, wood engraving 176 x 126mm Published by The Royal British Legion

13 ‘The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta’ by Christopher Marlowe 1933, wood engraving 175 x 108mm Published by the Golden Hours Press

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opposite page: top left:

14 Device for ‘The Cornhill Magazine’ 1933, wood engraving Actual size Commissioned by John Murray bottom left:

15 Illustration to ‘Poems’ by Thomas Hennell 1936, wood engraving Actual size Oxford University Press top right:

16 Device for Westminster Bank 1935, wood engraving Actual size bottom right:

17 Device for catalogue of exhibition of watercolours

by Eric Ravilious 1933, wood engraving Actual size Published by the Zwemmer Gallery

18 Decorations for the Kynoch Press Notebook & Diary 1933, wood engraving Actual size

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19 Dramatis Personæ from ‘Twelfth Night’ 1931, wood engraving 260 x 190mm Published by the Golden Cockerel Press

20 Title page to Gilbert White’s ‘The Natural History of Selborne’, Volume 1 1937, wood engraving 205 x 130mm Published by the Nonesuch Press

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22 ‘Fireworks’ (study for Midland Hotel, Morecambe mural) 1933, watercolour on paper 32 x 82cm (detail) Private collection

21 ‘A Lodging House’ (study for Morley College mural) c.1928, watercolour on paper 47.8 x 76.1cm Victoria & Albert Museum

23 ‘Flags’ (study for Midland Hotel, Morecambe mural) 1933, watercolour on paper 32 x 82cm (detail) Private collection

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24 Saddlers & Harness Maker from ‘High Street’ by J. M. Richards 1938, lithograph 235 x 156mm page size Published by The Royal British Legion

25 Letter Makers from ‘High Street’ 1938, lithograph

26 The Grape House Christmas card for Sir Stephen & Lady Tallents 1936, lithograph 205 x 145mm Private collection

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27 The Butcher’s Shop c.1937, watercolour 48 x 58.5cm Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

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28 The Stork, Hammersmith 1932, watercolour on paper 37.5 x 57cm Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

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29 Channel Steamer leaving Harbour 1935, watercolour on paper 52.1 x 45.1cm Private collection

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30 Untitled (Charlotte Bawden and Tirzah Garwood in the garden of Brick House, Great Bardfield) 1932, watercolour on paper 74 x 64cm Private collection, on loan to the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

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