Eric Ravilious: Imagined Realities (Hardback)
- Artist: Eric Ravilious
- Published: 2003
- Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers/Imperial War Museum, London
- Edition: First
- Format: Hardback
- Height: 27cm
- Pages: 144
- Illustrations: Illustrated in colour throughout.
£75.00
Add to basketEric Ravilious: Imagined Realities (Hardback)
The English artist Eric Ravilious (1903-42) was a painter of watercolours and murals, a book illustrator in wood engraving and lithography, and a designer of transfer-ware, pottery and porcelain.
From 1939 till his death he was an Official War Artist. This book presents a full retrospective of all aspects of his work, culminating in the final phase of his war artist work.
Ravilious is well known to a circle of collectors and admirers who feel no need to explain his work. Partly as a result of this, he has tended to remain isolated from the broader art historical narratives of the period. This book is the first sustained attempt to understand his appeal and importance using a wider artistic and historical context.
In addition to being a straight retrospective the book interprets Ravilious's work on the basis of documentary sources and more recent readings of art and ideas.
The book positions Ravilious in a European and American context of the period, identifying artists and designers whose work shows similar characteristics and require a historical grouping separate from modernism.
This out of print Eric Ravilious book accompanied an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, London, in October 2003.
In very good condition.
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Authors Biography
Alan Powers (born 1955) is a British author who specialises in writing books on architecture.
During his career, Alan Powers has combined writing with painting and illustration including aquatints, drawings, lithographs, murals, and watercolours. As a book author, he has concentrated on 20th century British architecture, with an interest in architectural preservation and has also written books on the design of book jackets and the artist Eric Ravilious.
An expert on 20th century architecture, Alan Powers was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in 2008.
Artists Biography
Watercolourist, wood engraver, lithographer and mural decorator, Ravilious was born in Acton but grew up in Eastbourne, Sussex, where he studied until receipt of a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Student in the Design School of the College, Ravilious was taught by Paul Nash and became friends, and sometime work companion, with Edward Bawden. In 1930 he married the artist Tirzah Garwood and befriended Sussex based artist Peggy Angus. It is from her home, Furlongs, near Firle on the Sussex Downs just outside of Brighton, that Ravilious began to paint his Downland subjects.
Ravilious went on to design for Wedgwood who, in 1937, brought out the George VI commemorative Coronation Mug, and in the same year the (much collected) Alphabet Mug and Nursery Ware designs. In 1938 Country Life published the book High Street, by J. M. Richards, for which Ravilious supplied a series of lithographs documenting the charms of certain Victorian high street shops - some no longer extant such as the Saddlers and Harness Maker's shop, or the Fireworks Shop.
Ravilious was appointed Official War Artist in 1940. His watercolours during this period document the setting up of coastal defences at, amongst other places, Newhaven in Sussex; he also worked on a series of lithographs which record life as a submariner patrolling the Channel waters. In 1942, aged 39, Ravilious was posted to Iceland, and in September he participated in an air/sea rescue on board a Hudson plane in search of an aircraft that had disappeared on the previous day. The Hudson itself, however, was lost and Ravilious, along with four others, never returned from this mission.
Ravilious is well known for his wood engravings and for his designs, but more recently it is his watercolours which have, perhaps, been of central interest. If artists are sometimes defined by their work on a particular area - Palmer by Shoreham, for instance - Ravilious, as Peyton Skipwith suggests, is the 'artist par excellence of the South Downs'* Ravilious's austerely beautiful watercolours are almost always devoid of people. But it is this very lack which Ravilious explores: so often in his paintings there is a conspicuousness of absence. There is evidence, almost always, of the land having been traversed and used: the paths are well trodden, the fences zigzag their way across the terrain and pieces of machinery lie rusting in the fields. These man-made artefacts are presences by association to the absent walker, farmer and machine operator; and the lack of actual presences can sometimes lend a certain sadness to the poignant beauty of the pictures.
