F E AT U R E
All images © James Ravilious
AN ENGLISH EYE Described as an expression of the common purpose of man, James Ravilious’ unsung retrospective documents the landscape and people of north Devon with a warmth and humility that was mirrored in the book’s compilation. Alex Schneideman charts its journey.
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ames Ravilious and his wife moved to the north Devon village of Dolton in 1972 hoping for art teaching work in the area. And it is here that a first thread through history becomes apparent: the threads that connect Ravilious’ work with the wider world criss-cross his life, as do the deep lanes that run like old and lost rivers through the north Devon countryside. Ravilous’ wife, the writer Robin née Whistler, still lives in north Devon, her homeland. Robin’s father was the poet and glass engraver Laurence Whistler who was, in turn, the younger brother of Rex Whistler, both major figures in the contemporary British art scene of the 20th century. James’ lineage had artistic weight too: his father was the engraver and artist Eric Ravilious. So in the union of Ravilious and Whistler two deep lanes joined with a kind of inevitability which seems to occur so often in the stories of creative endeavour.
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‘Ravilious and his wife left London and settled into the rhythm of the seasons in a secluded rural area of south-west England.’ Ravilious and his wife left London and settled into the rhythm of the seasons in a secluded rural area of south-west England. North Devon in the 1970s was a place of close community ties, old fashioned and unspoiled. And, as Robin says, James was, ‘looking for a path in life’. Before arriving in Devon, Ravilious had trained as a painter and engraver at St Martin’s School of Art in London and had been teaching for some years. He had not studied photography, but he had seen the 1969 V&A exhibition of Henri CartierBresson’s photographs, which ran for a short period of time and then toured to Sheffield,
York, Leeds, Eastbourne and finally Oxford. Ravilious visited this exhibition and was profoundly affected by it. For the first time he appreciated the ability of the medium to depict humanity and it was the spark that would lead him to pick up a Leica. Along with Cartier-Bresson, Ravilious’ great inspirations included Lewis Hine, Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, Walker Evans and William Eugene Smith, all exponents of the humanist current in photography. Another important influence came from the English photographer and artist Edwin Smith. After Smith’s death in 1971 it would be Olive, Smith’s widow, who gave Ravilious one of Edwin’s first cameras, an Ica bellows camera, and some old, uncoated Tessar lenses. These optics would help give his work the particular extended tonality that he became known for. The subtlety of his print making was also influenced by his close reading of Ansel Adam’s Zone System and discussions with the photographers’ guru, Brian Allen.
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