Eric Ravilious: About A Boy
"He was a delightful companion, cheerful, good-natured, intelligent and prepossessing in appearance."
Eric William Ravilious - ‘Boy’ to his closest friends due to his boyish good looks - was an early twentieth-century British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver - but is probably best remembered for his distinctive watercolours of English landscapes.
Eric was born on the 22nd of July 1903 in Acton, London, to Frank Ravilious, an obsessively religious man, and Emma (née Ford). He was the youngest of four children - one of whom died as an infant.
Whilst he was still young, the family moved to Eastbourne in Sussex, where his parents ran an antique shop. Eric enjoyed spending time in the clutter of the shop, and it was there he first discovered the English Watercolour School of paintings.
In 1919, after graduating from Eastbourne Grammar School, sixteen-year-old Eric enrolled at the Eastbourne School of Art and three years later won a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art in London. At the RCA, he met fellow artists Edward Bawden and Douglas Percy Bliss; the three of them took lodgings near one another and became close friends.
[Eric] was a delightful companion, cheerful, good-natured, intelligent and prepossessing in appearance. He was not robust physically, nor was he delicate. He could play a good game of tennis, but had no surplus energy… I never saw him depressed. Even when he fell in love — and that was frequent — he was never submerged by disappointment. Cheerfulness kept creeping in.
Douglas Percy Bliss1
In 1924, successful artist Paul Nash joined the RCA as a part-time teacher. Nash was a wood engraving enthusiast and was impressed by Eric and his work and, in 1925, supported him in an application to become a member of the Society of Wood Engravers. Wood engraving was integral to book design in the 1920s and 1930s, and Nash’s support helped Eric to get commissions for bookplates, which would become an important part of his future work.
When Bawden was awarded a Travelling Scholarship, Eric and Bliss moved to Redcliffe Road, renting a large studio space together. A number of their fellow students were already living and working on the same road, and Bawden joined the small artist community on returning from his travels.
In 1925, Eric was also awarded a Travelling Scholarship and visited Florence, Siena and Tuscany. On his return in September, he began teaching part-time at the Eastbourne School of Art. Student Diane Saintsbury Green described his first day there:
I have a very clear picture of him as he entered the room, and stood looking at us rather apprehensively, hands in pockets and his square shoulders slightly hunched - the sight of us, clustered around the table was evidently too much for him, as without speaking, he suddenly turned and went out. I thought he was a new student, he looked so young.2
It was in his second year at Eastbourne that he met and fell in love with new student Eileen ‘Tirzah’ Garwood. Tirzah was the third child of a retired lieutenant colonel who had moved into the area with his wife and five children. She became Eric’s most promising student and was described by a friend of his:
A stunner, with the long neck and slender grace of a Modigliani, and the aura and complexion of wild-rose petals.3
The couple married on 5th July 1930 and went on to have three children: John (1935), James (1939), and Anne (1941).
Following the wedding, Eric was offered part-time teaching positions at his old alma mater, the Royal College of Art, and the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford. He resigned from his position at Eastbourne, and he and Tirzah moved back to London. However, his principal occupation was still engraving and illustration work. In 1933, he was also commissioned to design and create a mural for the newly built Midland Railway Hotel in Morecambe.
Later that year, he and Tirzah moved from Kensington to Hammersmith, West London. The living room window of their new flat looked out across Upper Mall to the Thames, and Eric created several paintings of the Stork training ship that was moored there. Bawden was also living in Hammersmith, and the friends would enjoy bathing and boat-race parties on the bank of the river.
At this time, Eric and Bawden were keen to paint more rural landscapes and began to look for a permanent base in the country. In Great Bardfield, they came across Brick House, a large Georgian property owned by a retired ship stewardess. Bawden was now engaged to Charlotte Epton, another graduate of the Royal College of Art, and the two couples rented half of the house from the stewardess for weekends away from the city.
On the 24th of November 1933, Eric held his first one-person show - An Exhibition of Water-Colour Drawings - at the Zwemmer Gallery and sold twenty paintings. Bawden had exhibited the month before and sold twenty-four. Peggy Angus, a college friend from the RCA, was in attendance at Bawden’s show and invited to join them for a weekend at Brick House.
Peggy visited in January 1934, and the following spring, Eric and Tirzah stayed with her at Furlongs - her cottage near Lewes, Sussex. Eric fell in love with the area and the lifestyle at Furlongs and, along with many other artist friends, visited the house many times.
Even before his visit to Furlongs, Eric had been feeling unhappy with life in London, and he and Tirzah had discussed their shared desire to live in the country permanently. Edward and Charlotte also wanted to move into Brick House full-time, and Charlotte’s father bought the house for his daughter and son-in-law as a wedding present.
In 1934, Eric and Tirzah moved into Bank House, a small Georgian property on the main Street of Castle Hedingham, a village just ten miles from Great Bardfield. He was still teaching part-time at the RCA and working on several commissions, including designing for Wedgwood and Dunbar Hay, a London shop owned by another RCA friend, Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn. But, rural landscapes were now his favourite genre, and, in February 1936, his second one-person show of watercolours at the Zwemmer featured mostly Sussex and Essex landscapes.
However, everyday life was irrevocably changed for Eric and Tirzah - and the rest of the country - at 11.15 am on the 3rd of September 1939 when Neville Chamberlain made a 5-minute radio broadcast.
I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10, Downing Street.
This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany.
Aeroplane monitor points were set up on the hills all over England, and Eric took a part-time post at the Hedingham point. In December 1939, he accepted a full-time position as an artist for the War Artists’ Advisory Committee and was assigned to the Admiralty as an Honorary Captain in the Royal Marines.
In February 1940, he began work with the Royal Navy at Chatham Dockyard, where he painted ships, barrage balloons and other defences before sailing to Norway aboard HMS Highlander in May. From the deck of the Highlander, he painted scenes of HMS Glorious and HMS Ark Royal in action. On returning to Britain, he was stationed at various points across the country, including RAF Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire, where he would sketch from the rear cockpit of the planes.
On the 28th of August 1942, he flew to Iceland and joined a rescue mission the following day in search of a missing aircraft. The aircraft that Eric was on did not return, and four days later, he and the rest of the crew were declared lost in action.
A telegram arrived for Tirzah on the 5th of September, followed by a letter on the 6th.
In confirmation of the Admiralty’s telegram despatched today, I am commanded by My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty of State that they have been informed that your husband, temporary Captain Eric Ravilious, Royal Marines, had been reported as missing since Wednesday last, 2nd September, 1942, when the aircraft in which he was a passenger failed to return from a patrol.
My Lords desire me to express to you their deep sympathy in the great anxiety which this news must cause you and to assure you that any further information which can be obtained will be immediately communicated.4
A week later Tirzah received a letter from Eric dated the 1st of September.
My darling Tush,
I do hope you feel well again. It was a comfort to know of your plans and that Evelyn would be there for a month. Was there a heat wave in Essex? I left Scotland just as it was really hot and a beach scene like pre-war Eastbourne. The journey here was very good, (censored word) of perfectly calm flying - no tea of course but a dinner to make up for it on arrival. Yesterday was spent making the usual visits and they were all very hopeful and nice people. I was taken to lunch in the town to eat Icelandic food and the spread was unbelievable, like Fortnum at his best, caviar and pate, cheese, goodness know what. You assemble a pyramid of all this on the plate and drink milk with it. The shops have rather nice things, I see, though pretty expensive. Would you like a pair of gloves - sealskin with the fur on the back - but what size shall I buy? Draw round your hand on the writing paper. I saw a splendid narwhal horn yesterday, delicately spiralled and about six foot high as far as I remember. Perhaps if I go to Greenland it may be possible to find one. It is a beautiful thing, heavy of course and quite useless. No plane would take it I’m afraid. I am promised an expedition to see the geysers next week. They seem to need soap to start them off. It is jolly cold here, and windy and rainy too, like January, after the hot sun in Scotland: no place for you at all, though you would like the country, especially the flowers and the seals. I hope to visit them soon. I might collect some flowers for you and shells for John, if there are such things, but the weather is too rough to go and look for them. I wish I had brought Di’s pillow as there isn’t one here. One must travel with that and looking glass for shaving and a towel. I shall buy them later. There are no sheets either but I don’t mind that at all. I sleep well without.
Is Edward home yet? And how is my father? I will write to him when there is a chance. All my love to James and John and Anne and I hope James doesn’t mind being away from the family. Give my love too to Ariel and Evelyn. I mean to write to John Crittall and lots of people - but explain to them how difficult writing is on these trips.
We flew over that mountain country that looks like craters on the moon and it looked just like those photographs the M. of Information gave me, with shadows very dark and shaped like leaves. It is a surprising place. There are no mosquitoes so far but clouds of dust make up for their absence. The rain has laid the dust a bit today.
Write to this address all the time, as they will forward letters, and I shall be travelling about the island a lot; of course remember that letters are censored.
Get well won’t you Tusho and eat all you can. A pity you couldn’t live in this town and get fat, which is certainly what would happen if you gave your mind to it.
Let me have the introduction to Lt. Benham if it turns up. I will go and see him. Goodbye darling. Take care of yourself. My love (and gratitude for coming like that at a minute’s notice) to Evelyn.
Eric5
The body of Eric William Ravilious was never recovered, and he is commemorated at the Chatham Naval Memorial. With an already immense portfolio of work in his thirty-nine years, we can only imagine what he may have gone on to create.
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Sources and Recommended Reading:
Binyon, Helen, Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist (Lutterworth Press, 2007)
Constable, Freda, The England of Eric Ravilious (Lund Humphries, 1982)
Gilmore, Patricia, Artists at Curwen (Tate Publishing, 1977)
Richards, J.M. (Intro), The Wood Engravings of Eric Ravilious (Lion & Unicorn Press, 1972)
Russell, James, Ravilious in Pictures: Sussex and the Downs (The Mainstone Press, 2009)
Helen Binyon, Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist (Lutterworth Press, 2007) p. 5.
Binyon, p. 42.
Binyon, p. 43.
Binyon, p. 137.
Binyon, p. 138-9.
Hello Stewart, thank you for your comments, I’m so pleased that you found it interesting. He had such a tragically short life, but left a wonderful body of work. Of course, I’d be very happy for you to share it. You should be able to share it from a button at the bottom of the biography. Thank you so much for your interest and support! Victoria :)
Those lovely, evocative Thirties colours, and oh, how very sad, and yet unsurprising. I wondered why I hadn't heard of him before.