Private
Collection
Collection
Eric Ravilious
(1903 - 1942)
Chanticleer, 1930
Private Collection
Eric Ravilious (1903 - 1942)
Signed
Watercolour over pencil
171/4 x 23 in. (43.7 x 58.5 cm)
Size:
Height – 43.7cm
Width – 58.5cm
Exhibited: Eastbourne Towner Art Gallery, extended loan; The Twentieth Century,
The Fine Art Society, London, October 2005 (cat. no. 24). WW2 – War Pictures by British Artists, Morley College London, 28 October -23 November 2016, cat 10.
Literature:Anne Ullmann (ed.), Ravilious atWar,The Fleece Press, Upper Denby, Huddersfield, 2002, illus. p. 101, no. 50. WW2 – War Pictures by British Artists, Edited by Sacha Llewellyn & Paul Liss, July 2016, cat 10, page 46.
During WW2 Ravilious was employed as a Ministry of Information artist specialising in Admiralty topics
Scapa
Flow is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, and was the
site of Britain’s chief naval base during the SecondWorldWar . Churchill
ordered the construction of a series of causeways to block the eastern
approaches after Scapa Flow was penetrated by German submarine U-47 in
October 1939.
Ravilious
refers to Leaving Scapa Flow in a letter to E.M.O’R. Dickey on 20 June
1940, as one of a series of watercolours intended for exhibition,
probably for a war-effort show at the National Gallery, London,
organised by the Artists’Advisory Committee (see Anne Ullmann [ed.],
Ravilious atWar, Upper Denby 2002, p. 99).The finished watercolour is in
the collection of Cartwright Hall, Bradford.
In July 1941, again
attached to the Admiralty as an OfficialWar Artist, Ravilious painted
on the Isle of May, in Scotland, near the Firth of Forth.Weekly east
coast convoys formed there to make their hazardous voyages down to
Sheerness in Kent.The Forth Bridge here is shown protected by Barrage
Balloons. Ravilious was killed on 2 September 1942, accompanying a Royal
Air Force air–sea rescue mission off Iceland.
On the reverse:
Born in London he studied at the Eastbourne School of Art and at The Royal College of Art under Paul Nash, where Edward Bawden became a close friend. Initially a muralist (none of which has survived), he became widely known for his luminous watercolours, woodcuts, lithographs ‘ notably his High Street Shops executed by the Curwen Press, (published by Country Life in 1938 in a book with a text by JM Richards, husband of Peggy Angus), ceramics for Wedgewood and graphics for London Transport, as well as glass and furniture design. Much inspired by the South Downs in East Sussex, he was a frequent visitor to Furlongs, the cottage of the artist Peggy Angus. In 1930 he married fellow artist ‘Tirzah’ Garwood, they then moved to rural Essex, at first sharing a house with the Bawdens. An official World War II artist and with a commission with the Royal Marines, he died while with an RAF air sea rescue mission to Iceland. His works are in the collections of numerous British museums and art galleries, the largest holding is at the Towner Gallery, Eastbourne.
Selected Literature: Alan Powers, Eric Ravillious: Imagined Realities, Imperial War Museum, London, 2003.
