SKU: 11906
Tirzah Garwood-Ravilious
(1908 - 1951)
The Big Man, 1930
£3,500
Tirzah Garwood-Ravilious (1908 - 1951)
£24,000
Size:
Height – 25.5cm
Width – 26.5cm
1 in stock
The present suite were the first of Garwood’s engravings to be accepted by the Society of Wood Engravers for its annual exhibition in 1927. Garwood’s works were praised by the Times, whose critic noted her “cool, satirical eye”.
Often described as a mother and wife, Tirzah Garwood sometimes appears to only exist when discussed in relation to her husband, the esteemed painter, designer and illustrator, Eric Ravilious. Though her work has spent decades growing cold under the long shadow cast by the work of her husband, in more recent years, it has been gaining the recognition and admiration it deserves.
Born Eileen Lucy Garwood, to a wealthy family in Gillingham, Kent, in 1908, Tirzah was raised in Eastbourne, where she attended the local art school before training at Eastbourne School of Art. It was at Eastbourne College that Garwood met Ravilious, then her wood-engraving tutor and whom she described, somewhat uncharitably, as ‘not quite a gentleman’ and ‘tall and thin, with a head that jutted out at the back’. Though Garwood’s parents did not attempt to conceal their disapproval of the working-class Ravilious, by July 1930, the pair had wed, marking the end of Garwood’s incipient career in wood engraving.
Though Garwood would continue in her artistic endeavours during the marriage, experimenting with delicate designs upon marbled paper, she was mostly content to fulfil her domestic and maternal responsibilities. After the tragic and untimely death of Ravilious in 1942, Garwood ventured into oil painting, creating a series of simultaneously naïve, and yet arduously detailed, works. Sadly, Garwood, like Ravilious, died prematurely, in 1951, before she was able to establish her career as a painter.
Today, Garwood’s works are increasingly valued for their clarity, wit, and craftsmanship. The present prints are particularly rare, hand-signed by the artist and drawn from small editions of just 10 to 30. Like her Great Bardfield contemporaries, Garwood’s wood engravings carry a quiet strength, their apparent simplicity underpinned by remarkable technical and emotional depth.
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.
