Intangible Englishness: Eric Ravilious in Sussex
We look into the work of the wartime artist and his contemporaries...
October 20, 2023
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
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Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
.jpg)
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
.jpg)
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
.jpg)
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
‘I had no notion that this was art,’ remarks Alan Bennett, recalling when he first encountered Eric Ravilious’ works hanging in his schoolroom, as a child. Ravilious’ watercolours of Sussex landscapes, populated with lumpy-looking cars and tractors, seemed too cosy, too Christmas card-like, to be considered alongside the ‘Great British artists’, the likes of JMW Turner or David Hockney, or his contemporaries, Paul Nash and Henry Moore, His diverse practice – working across design, book illustration, and wood-engraving – makes him all the easier to like. ‘If it’s not hard’ – to produce, or to access – ‘it’s not great’.
Drawn to War, a new documentary by Foxtrot Films, wills us to think otherwise. Director Margy Kinmouth applies the same attention to the life of Ravilious (1903-1942), as to her previous subjects, including the Russia’s post-revolutionary avant-garde. Ravilious, by comparison, seems rather quaint. And his works are, ones which speaks to a particular kind – and location - of Englishness, one exclusive to the south. Local artists and institutions should be championed, and should collaborate, but to privilege Ravilious as a pioneer of British artist is to reinforce a southern-centric idea of Britishness, and Englishness - and perhaps a north-south divide.
Tamsin Greig and Jeremy Irons provide the soothing voiceovers. Ella Ravilious, the artist’s granddaughter, and a curator at the V&A in London, features with James Russell. Celebrity testimonies from Grayson Perry, to the aforementioned Alan Bennett, are used in an effort to intellectualise both art and artist. The inaction of his paintings is explained as something ‘ominous’, a scene just before or after a moment; for Bennett, ‘Tea at Furlongs’ (1939) might as well be called Munich, 1938.
Writer Robert Macfarlane extends the effort to explain Ravilious’ relative obscurity. His landscapes are ‘not savage, like Scottish Highlands’, but rather calm, gentle, ancient places, which suggest themselves as ‘pre-national environments’. His chalk figures are synonymous with the southern English countryside, places onto which nostalgic, and conservative, reflections for another place and time are often projected.
More interesting is what his works have to say about wartime England. Drawn to Circle starts and ends with his ‘exciting’ commission by the War Artists Advisory Board in Finland during World War II, a Scandinavian adventure shared by previous English artists such as William Morris - of particular note was the food, ‘Fortnum’s at its best’, a theme which crops up in writings too. But in between, Drawn to War does broach these romantic, ‘boys’ ideas of conflict. We appreciate how the war was an opportunity for those (without privilege) who would otherwise have spent their whole lives at home, never travelling, as well as the hypocrisy in the archive, of a government and media criticising the ‘Hun’, German attacks on women and children.
Ravilious was one of the first official war artists, and the first to die in service. The cold ‘failed to return’ delivered to his family’s doorstep reflects the instrumental treatment of soldiers and artists alike. The War Artists Advisory Board also dispatched Ravilious and others’ works across Britain during World War II, in a bid to use culture to unite the Home Front. The government also planned a propaganda exhibition in South America in a bid to draw the region into the conflict, but the ship containing Ravilious’ work was destroyed en-route – the subject of a future book and exhibition at the nearby Towner Eastbourne, already home to the Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library, which places the artist in conversation with contemporaries like Frances Hodgkins, Vanessa Bell, Enid Marx and crucially, Tirzah Garwood – his wife, and the second subject of the documentary.
The history of war is told in his own words, but it evades the terror, and self-centrism, which permeates the discourse of more contemporary war artists, like Peter Howson. Though dated, we see how history was made and displayed as it happened, with exhibitions taking place at the National Gallery as early as 1940. The contemporary connections are self-evident; brief words from Ai Weiwei, whose History of Bombs (2021) was recently shown at the International War Museum, are arguably neither necessary nor really relevant.
Drawn to War excels where it simply indulges in the artist, who himself took pleasure in his work. In his alphabet mugs designed for Wedgwood, he tucks the Y and Z of the alphabet inside the rim of the mug, a playful approach to ceramics. ‘Jolly’ wood engravings, like ‘Me In My Striped Pyjamas Having a Nightmare’ and ‘Here is a picture of me saving the country!’, are the stand-out works, but also marks of his sidelines in illustration and teaching, necessary endeavours that eluded his more financially privileged peers.
Such illustrations pepper his letters, most of which were sent to those women with whom he had affairs. Often, he would write requesting or asking them for more of the food they had sent him; painting on plein air - and adultery - is hungry-making work. Still, Drawn to War begins with a letter to Tirzah, an artist worthy of even more attention.
Reductively nicknamed ‘Tush’, as the third child in her family, Garwood was an artist and engraver best known for her paper marblings. Whilst her ‘devoted and industrious Eric’ travelled and philandered, she mothered and raised their children whilst continuing to practice. Her ‘colonel class’ family background, and shrewd sale of marble works as lampshades in nearby shops, financially supported the Ravilious household throughout the war too. She lamented the change in Ravilious’ nature, the loss of their blossoming relationship when they practised in collaboration; he rejected her as being ‘no fun’, and worse, having ‘no initiative’.
Her woodcuts undermine these claims completely. The confidently striding women of ‘The Crocodile’ contrast with the truly ominous tone of ‘The Wife’, perhaps a self-portrait of the artist glancing suspiciously at a letter on the table. Indeed, these works are amongst the most original found in the long, lingering shots of Drawn to War.
Her treatment also speaks to the different experiences of war, on the Home Front, and on the front line. ‘Take care of yourself’, Eric would sign, as though knowing no one would do so for her, ‘and tell me if another child is on the way!’ (though, to be sure, she matched his humour in kind, with deft lines like ‘I hope you’re still intact!’). In Ravilious’ absence, Garwood navigated childcare, abortions, and cancer; on his death, she didn’t receive his pension for two years, due to his ambiguous classification as missing.
Ravilious, to be sure, is at comparatively low risk of falling into posthumous obscurity. Garwood too was a prolific letterist, conscious of history: ‘I want to write my life whilst I still can…Whilst I write a German airplane circles my head’. The artist has been remembered with books, community supper clubs, and soon, an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which will no doubt contribute to understanding women’s perspectives on conflict through culture.
Drawn to War thus joins other arts and museum documentaries in providing an artist with their largest exhibition to date; whilst his watercolours will fade, digital does not. It’s something made apparent at the Dacre Road Car Park in nearby Newhaven, the third stop in a public trail of giant billboards of Ravilious’ work. In Following Ravilious, Towner and Creative Newhaven commission new works by contemporary artists, each responding to both Ravilious’ original depiction and the contemporary East Sussex landscape.
At Dacre Road, Charlie Prodger enlarges a 3MB photograph, presenting a blurry sunset form. (Ravilious’ original files get up to 1GB). At Denton Island, Mark Titchner’s ‘Blessed Are The Eyes That See The Things We See’ (2023) adapts a phrase from the artist’s gravestone, exposing the contrast between the natural and industrial landscapes, of Newhaven’s asphalt, scrapheap, and waste recycling centres. Most interesting is Emily Allchurch, who works in layers of architecture and history. Her ‘Return to Port (after Ravilious)’ highlights long-term and daily changes in the waterfront, with photographs taken at many points in time.
Closer to the water, we find the crosshatched brush strokes, a crossover from Ravilious’ drawing practice, and simple lines of the lighthouse stairs, in his ‘Newhaven Harbour’ (1936). Here, it nostalgically looks over The Hope Inn, a place where he took pleasure in brandy, whisky, and good food.
Jo Lamb’s response to Ravilious’ well-known work will be donated to Hillcrest Community Centre, a local community institution, which most recently screened (and dined viewers of) Drawn to War. It’s a reminder that we make choices in deciding our local champions; and that some legacies should live longer than others.
Eric Ravilious - Drawn to War is on view at cinemas across the UK.
Following Ravilious - Newhaven Views is on view around Newhaven, East Sussex until 29 October 2023, part of Towner’s centenary celebrations demonstrating the gallery’s commitment to contemporary art in East Sussex.
The Ravilious Gallery and Collection Library at Towner Eastbourne is free to enter year round.
