Eric Ravilious: Imagined Realities

Eric Ravilious Imagined Realities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric Ravilious � Imagined Realities includes illustrations of many previously unpublished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previously unpublished, and is the most comprehensive account of Ravilious’s career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.

‘Ravilious has attracted interest not

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….

His letters show a constant concern

that people should be able to find

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’.

Dr Alan Powers writes and lectures

on twentieth-century art, architecture

and design. He has been a guest

curator at Kettles Yard and the

Design Museum, and is a Professor

in Architecture and Cultural History

at the University of Greenwich in

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.

This book was awarded third

prize in the Art Newspaper

& AXA Art Exhibition Catalogue

Competition, 2004.

IMPER IAL WAR MUSEUM

Philip Wilson Publishers6 Salem RoadLondon W2 4BUwww.philip-wilson.co.uk

Eric R

avilious�

Imagined R

ealities

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

Eric Ravilious

Ravilious_Prelims.qxd:Eric Ravilious Prelims 27/9/11 15:51 Page 1

Eric Ravilious � Imagined Realities

ALAN POWERS

I M P E R I A L W A R M U S E U M

P H I L I P W I L S O N P U B L I S H E R S

CONTENTS

FOREWORD 4

INTRODUCTION 7

MURALS 11

ILLUSTRATION 18

DESIGN 22

WATERCOLOURS 33

WAR PA INT INGS 46

CONCLUSION:

Imagined and Imaginal Realities 58

NOTES 66

PLATES 69

B IB L IOGRAPHY 140

CATALOGUE 142

CHRONOLOGY 143

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 144

LENDERS 144

Ravilious_pp06-67.qxd:Eric Ravilious pages 6-67 28/9/11 12:09 Page 6

IF YOU CAN ’T SEE how good the English water-colourists are, you can’t really see painting’ saidthe American critic Clement Greenberg in aninterview in 1968.1 He was referring to the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth century painters,

mentioning Thomas Girtin, John Crome, John Sell Cotmanand Alexander Cozens. Greenberg was mainly associatedwith the abstract expressionist avant-garde, but he couldrecognise the continuing value of these artists, whom EricRavilious regarded as his precursors.

English art historians have tended to treat Ravilious as amarginal figure, detached from the movements of his timesuch as abstraction and surrealism, but Frances Spaldingbegins a recent essay by stating that ‘Eric Ravilious isarguably the greatest British watercolourist of the twentiethcentury’.2 The existence of a group ofcollectors and enthusiasts is evident,but may not always serve the needs ofobjective appraisal, and since therehas been little recent reappraisal oftwentieth-century British watercolouras a whole, it is hard to develop an argument based oncomparison. Even then, one needs to find a way to includeRavilious’s work as a wood engraver and designer. A retro-spective exhibition allows for a comprehensive appraisal andthis essay assumes that a biographical narrative, developedunder thematic headings, is the best way to discuss devel-opment and change, and provide the basis for a broaderinterpretation.

Frank Ravilious, Eric’s father, shifted in his career fromcraftsman to an antique dealer and moved from Acton inWest London, where Eric was born, to Eastbourne. He wasan apprehensive man, obsessed with his own interpretationof the Old Testament, but in the words of Eric’s wife, ‘heliked picnics and jolly times’ as well. Eric was the youngestof three surviving children and close to his mother. J. M.Richards, who was one of his close friends, believed that thefamily background made Eric ‘wary of involvement for therest of his life. He kept his many family troubles to himself;their dramas and impecuniosities, the morning and eveningattendance at chapel on Sundays’.3 If one believes that to

some extent all men attempt to relive his fathers’ lives andredeem their mistakes, then Ravilious’s choice of career wasapt, for he was able to transform Frank’s stifled visual andemotional sensitivity into creative work that was more far-reaching as a form of mission.

Two small sketchbooks containing drawings made byRavilious when he was at Eastbourne Boy’s MunicipalSecondary School (later Eastbourne Grammar School forBoys) show objects such as a pair of boots or a teapot, care-fully drawn in pencil outline. Many children draw neatly, butthese few outlines convey a strength that is recognisablethroughout his career. His parents did not object when theheadmaster suggested that Eric should transfer to East -bourne College of Art, which he entered in 1919. Goodlooking, with an ability and enthusiasm for ball games and a

pleasure in clothes (including fancydress) and dancing, Ravilious had thesocial skills required in the 1920s, andnever needed to act the outsider, yeta fellow student of this period, JohnLake, recalled with his ‘extraordinary,

almost Pan-like charm’, Ravilious ‘always seemed to beslightly somewhere else, as if he lived a private life which didnot completely coincide with material existence.’ This innerimaginative world, originating perhaps as a means of escapefrom the aspects of home that he could not accept, wassomething Ravilious was able to depend on for inspirationthroughout his creative life.

In 1922, Ravilious won the single £60 scholarship fromEastbourne School of Art to the Royal College of Art. HisEastbourne friend Donald Towner joined the College at thesame time, although new friends now entered Ravilious’slife, of whom none was more important than EdwardBawden (1903–89), also a design student, who came, likehim, from a non-conformist, shop-keeping background,although a rather more normal and financially successfulone, in Braintree, Essex. They became lodgers in the samehouse in Redcliffe Road, where Ravilious shared withDouglas Percy Bliss, an Oxford graduate who beganresearch for a history of wood engraving and shared hisdiscoveries with his friends. Ravilious was known as ‘The

Introduction

Boy’, partly because he disliked his first name, and partlybecause it seemed to suit his youthfulness. The threestudents discovered the archaism and bright colours ofClaud Lovat Fraser, designer of the hugely successful revivalof John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera at the Lyric Theatre,Hammersmith, which Ravilious saw several times. TheFrench 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 forBawden. Barnett Freedman and Enid Marx were studentsfrom the painting school who also made their mark in illus-tration and design in the 1920s, while Bliss wrote the firstarticles on Ravilious and Bawden in Artwork magazine. Allthree exchanged facetious letters full of ambition. WhenBliss edited the student magazine Gallimaufry in 1925,Ravilious made a design for the cover, showing a bee in thecentre of a sharply delineated carnation bloom.

Ravilious and his contemporaries belonged to the gener-ation of the ‘Bright Young Things’. Even before the FirstWorld War, British society had eased its restrictive conven-tions, as Virginia Woolf recalled when she said that ‘in orabout December 1910 human character changed’, and oldcertainties began to disappear.4 Those born after 1900, likeRavilious, had been too young to fight in the War, althoughsome slightly older student contemporaries, such as HenryMoore, had been caught up as young recruits during its finalmonths. Ravilious’s own age group were formed in the rela-tively relaxed atmosphere of the 1920s, and his work mayseem redolent of the Epicureanism of the Sitwells, some ofwhose books for the publisher George Duckworth wereembellished with his covers.5 Like them, he practised a formof detachment that was, in its way, a political commitmentto aesthetic perfection, although he was later active in theleft-wing Artists’ International Association.

RCA students were encouraged to study in the V&A,whose galleries were accessible by a doorway leadingstraight from their own College. Influences collected hereappear in Ravilious’s scrapbooks and included those listedby Bliss as ‘popular woodcut and embroideries of Tudor andStuart periods in their gay, happy-go-lucky freedom ofdesign, exempt from the burdens of academic art – its

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

perspective, anatomy, classical composition and the like.’6 Inthe Print Room, he was also able to handle works by thewatercolour masters he admired. As Bliss wrote later, ‘Hehad exquisite taste and sifted with the skill of an anthologistthe rare things that could help him in his work.’7 Ravilious’sscrapbooks, although assembled in later years, tell thewhole story. The artist’s eye brought history into a singleconspectus, making everything contemporary. This training,combined with the constant exchange of discovery withother students, was probably more important than anythinghe received from the tutors.

According to Bawden, Ravilious needed to complete hisDiploma in two years rather than the usual three, as hisscholarship was running out, and chose mural decoration ashis special subject. Bawden described his work of 1924,achieved with gesso powder and ordinary colour rather thanthe reproduction of ancient methods taught by Tristram, as‘a big gay painting that really had some pretensions to beinga mural.’8 An otherwise unfavourable review of the Collegeexhibition included two of his engravings and two designs byBawden, noting that ‘The work of this designer, and alsovarious contributions by E. W. Ravilious, give promise ofgood things to come.9 Ravilious was awarded a travellingscholarship, spent the summer in Italy. Friends such asBawden, who went to Italy the following year on a scholar -ship, tended to belittle the value of this journey. Ravilioushad little to show for it, but his later work shows frequentaffinities to painters of the Tuscan quattrocento, most of allperhaps to the cool planar structuring of Piero della Fran -cesca, the top pin-up of the 1920s. The scholarship mustalso have funded a further year at the college, and in theautumn of 1925 Paul Nash, engaged as a part-time visitingtutor, was a strong influence on Ravilious and his friends.Nash turned to illustration and graphic design from a mix -ture of financial necessity and a belief that artists were bestable to introduce fresh ideas. ‘I was fortunate in being thereduring an out break of talent’, Nash wrote of his time at theCollege, listing Edward Burra, Edward Bawden, BarnettFreedman and Ravilious among the artists and designers,along with Enid Marx, Norah Braden, William Chappell andBarbara Ker-Seymer in other fields.10 Apart from Bawden,

the college contemporaries who played the most importantroles in Ravilious’s later life were Peggy Angus, PercyHorton, Raymond Coxon, Geoffrey Rhoades, Helen Binyonand Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn. Nash introduced students to arange of ancient and modern literature and contemporaryart. He was generous in recommending students to potentialemployers such as Oliver Simon at the Curwen Press. Asdescribed on p. 37, Nash and his brother John were bothimportant influences on Ravilious and Bawden as water-colour painters.

Nash started wood engraving in 1919, at a time when themedium was growing rapidly in popularity, with regularexhibitions and a demand from publishers of books (privatepresses and trade) and magazines. Ravilious began makingwood engravings in 1923 and soon followed Nash inadopting a white line cut into the solid areas of black. Hiswork was, however, more historically based than histeacher’s, employing a technique of tonal cutting with smallstrokes that Bliss says was derived from the ‘ManièreCriblée’ prints made on metal plates in Germany in thesixteenth century. Bawden recalled that Ravilious maderough drawings onto the block which ‘served only as a guidefor the real drawing that was done by the graver in the act of cutting into the surface of the boxwood’, resulting in‘a freedom, liveliness and invention.’11 It was a methodrequiring more than the usual degree of concentration andsureness of touch. The engraving of a Sussex church, whichRavilious contributed to Gallimaufry, shows this techniqueon the hillside, while the trees are more stylised with over-sized leaves. In this year, on Nash’s recommendation,Ravilious was elected as an associate member of the Society

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

‘Taurus’ from the LanstonMonotype Almanack 1929, wood engraving 100 x 63mm

Boy bird-nesting 1927, wood engraving 87 x 102mm

Untitled (Sussex Church) 1925, wood engraving 113 x 129mm

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

of Wood Engravers, and was able to participate in theirexhibitions, where his work could be seen by publishers. Hisengravings, together with long lost tile designs and a ‘deco-rative panel’, were exhibited among a range of art schoolworks in the British section of the Paris Exhibition of 1925.12

Ravilious’s engravings for the philosophical novel Desert, byMartin Armstrong, published by Jonathan Cape in 1926, arerecognisably connected to Nash, yet begin to reveal his ownstyle in their delicacy of cutting and approach to symbolism.

With its small scale and precision of design, woodengraving lends itself to intensity of image making. Much ofwhat can be said about Ravilious as an engraver would applyequally well to many of his contemporaries, but withoutforcing extra layers of meaning on his audience, Ravilioushad a special ability to convey an inner world of imaginationthrough everyday subjects as well as themore poetic scenes, such as the tapestriedroom with a sleeping nude figure, that wasincluded in Gallimaufry’s successor, The

Mandrake, in 1926. Sometimes the effect islike Stanley Spencer, as in The Twelve

Moneths, 1927, with its awkward bird-nesting boy and itsswimmer, out of scale with his surroundings but held in amoment of stillness. With the Almanack 1929, for theLanston Monotype Corporation, Ravilious reached maturityas an engraver with an assurance of technique and design.This small book contains a ‘Preface by the Engraver’, theonly personal statement about his work that Ravilious everpublished. It shows a command of the history of symbols, inthis case principally those of the Zodiac, and speculatesabout their origins. ‘The sun, in his yearly course throughthe Ecliptic seemed to be in the position of overseer,watching in turn over each of the twelve constellations of theZodiac’, Ravilious writes, considering how the unpromisingpatterns of stars had been dreamed into men and beasts.‘He inspired and controlled their activities, their influenceupon the earth, its crops, and upon man. … A clear starrynight probably was stimulating to the faith of the AncientGreek in a way we are not able to realise. He could see withhis mind’s eye all the monstrous forms of the gods andheroes.’13 Ravilious refers to similarities between the chalk

figure of the Wilmington Giant near Eastbourne (also knownas the Long Man of Wilmington) and a figure of Virgoholding staves in her hands, in frescoes at San Gimignano byBartolo di Fredi of ‘Scenes of the Creation’. This chalk figureappears twice in the Almanack 1929, once male and onceambiguously female. The text goes on to speculate about itssymbolic meaning – is it ‘the Sun-God pushing aside thegates of darkness?’ Here is an artist aware of the symbolicsystems of the Renaissance period, and able to mould themto his needs.

� � �

The murals at Morley College for Working Men and Women in Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth [pls. 1, 2,

21], which Ravilious and Bawden paintedbetween 1928 and 1929, were the gift of theart dealer Sir Joseph Duveen. The 21-year-old Rex Whistler’s Refreshment Room muralsat the Tate Gallery, also funded by Duveen,had been opened in 1926 to considerable

acclaim. He offered to pay for another similar venture,although the rates of £1 per day were those for a skilledcraftsman rather than a fine artist. Charles Aitken, directorof the Tate (then called The National Gallery, Millbank)proposed Morley College as a suitable place. Whistler hadbeen a student at the Slade School, whose reputation in fineart was being challenged by the Royal College, and recentgraduates of the latter were invited to submit designs.Morley College, which moved to its present site in 1924, wasone of the most imaginative enterprises for adult educationin London, founded in association with the Old Vic Theatreand its legendary director, Lilian Baylis.

The selection of artists was strongly influenced byWilliam Rothenstein as principal of the Royal College andwhen Bawden and Ravilious were chosen (along with theircontemporary Cyril Mahoney who painted the back wall ofthe concert hall), he recommended that they should indulgein ‘fantasy’. Their site, the Refreshment Room, was locatedin the basement of a rear addition to a large Georgian house designed by the architects Lanchester & Lodge and

Murals

7 ‘Submarine Series’ 1941, lithographs on paperEach 280 x 320mmImperial War Museum

Commander of a Submarine looking through a Periscope

Testing Davis Apparatus Different Aspects of Submarines

The Ward Room (1)

8 Coastal Defences1940, watercolour on paper45.7 x 60.9cmImperial War Museum

Ravilious_pp68-115.qxd:Eric Ravilious Plates pp.68-115 27/9/11 15:36 Page 69

12 Doctor Faustus conjuring Mephostopheles1929, wood engraving176 x 126mmPublished by The Royal British Legion

13 ‘The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta’ by Christopher Marlowe1933, wood engraving175 x 108mmPublished by the Golden Hours Press

opposite page:

top left:14 Device for ‘The Cornhill

Magazine’1933, wood engravingActual sizeCommissioned by John Murray

bottom left:15 Illustration to ‘Poems’ by

Thomas Hennell1936, wood engravingActual sizeOxford University Press

top right:16 Device for Westminster

Bank1935, wood engravingActual size

bottom right:17 Device for catalogue of

exhibition of watercolours by Eric Ravilious1933, wood engravingActual sizePublished by the Zwemmer Gallery

18 Decorations for the Kynoch Press Notebook & Diary1933, wood engravingActual size

19 Dramatis Personæ from ‘Twelfth Night’1931, wood engraving260 x 190mmPublished by the Golden Cockerel Press

20 Title page to Gilbert White’s ‘The Natural History of Selborne’, Volume 11937, wood engraving205 x 130mmPublished by the Nonesuch Press

21 ‘A Lodging House’ (study for Morley College mural) c.1928, watercolour on paper47.8 x 76.1cmVictoria & Albert Museum

22 ‘Fireworks’ (study for Midland Hotel, Morecambe mural)1933, watercolour on paper32 x 82cm (detail)Private collection

23 ‘Flags’ (study for Midland Hotel, Morecambe mural)1933, watercolour on paper32 x 82cm (detail)Private collection

24 Saddlers & Harness Makerfrom ‘High Street’ by J. M. Richards1938, lithograph235 x 156mm page sizePublished by The Royal British Legion

25 Letter Makersfrom ‘High Street’1938, lithograph

26 The Grape House Christmas card for Sir Stephen & Lady Tallents1936, lithograph205 x 145mmPrivate collection

27 The Butcher’s Shopc.1937, watercolour48 x 58.5cmTowner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

28 The Stork, Hammersmith1932, watercolour on paper37.5 x 57cmTowner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

29 Channel Steamer leaving Harbour1935, watercolour on paper52.1 x 45.1cmPrivate collection

30 Untitled (Charlotte Bawden and Tirzah Garwood in the garden of Brick House, Great Bardfield)1932, watercolour on paper74 x 64cmPrivate collection, on loan to the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

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