SKU: 11903
Tirzah Garwood-Ravilious
(1908 - 1951)
The Seasons (set of 4 prints)
£24,000
Institutional Collection
Tirzah Garwood-Ravilious (1908 - 1951)
Size:
Height – 23cm
Width – 18cm
Frederick Austin lived with his brother, Robert Sargeant Austin (RA), and was a close friend of Tirzah Garwood and her husband, Eric Ravilious. This wood engraving had been held within the family for over 90 years and is thought to have been gifted to Austin by Garwood before the start of the Second World War.
The present work is an unorthodox self-portrait, with Garwood manifesting as a cat-human hybrid, whilst her husband, Eric Ravilious, is shown seated in the armchair. The subject is taken from the Jean de La Fontaine fable, in which a bachelor, deeply in love with his cat, transforms her into a woman, believing that her new form would bring him happiness. It is possible that the work represents Garwood’s fears and anxieties surrounding matrimony.
Condition Report
With overall toning, this is largely uniform in appearance, though there are some paler spots around the top right corner. The work has been unevenly trimmed to all edges. A loss to the lower right margin, a small dog-ear fold corner to the upper right corner and a larger dog-ear fold to the lower left corner. Some grubby marks to the top right margin and some very minor scattered foxing spots.
Eileen ‘Tirzah’ Garwood attended Eastbourne School of Art (1925’28), where she was taught by Eric Ravilious (1903 – 1942) whom she married in 1930.
She first exhibited in 1927, at the Redfern Gallery, and an early woodcut shown at the 1927 SWE exhibition received significant praise in The Times. Such was the originality of her printmaking that she exerted an influence over Ravilious’ own wood engravings. She was also commissioned by the BBC in 1928 to illustrate Granville Bantock’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, and made whimsical but exacting observational pictures that were popular with children and exhibited by the Society for Education in Art.
While recovering from emergency mastectomy surgery in 1942 she wrote her autobiography, Long Live Great Bardfield & Love to You All (published posthumously in 2012). After Ravilious’ death that same year, Garwood remained in Essex until her remarriage in 1946. She was again diagnosed with cancer in 1948 and died in 1951. In 1952, a memorial exhibition was held at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne.
