Have You Seen Me?

As part of the creation of a catalogue raisonné for the work of Eric Ravilious, the public is being asked to help locate missing watercolours

- Huon Mallalieu

CHEERFULNESS kept creeping in,’ remarked Douglas Percy Bliss and that is one of the reasons why his friend and fellow artist Eric Ravilious is so warmly regarded. Despite the general absence of humans in much of his work—he was not good at them and, when they do appear, they may seem slightly surreal—the manmade nature of his subject matter, not just machinery or domestic interiors, but even the Downs with their chalk figures, gives his watercolours humanity and spirituality.

Ravilious (1903–42) is sometimes said to have been overlooked, but if that is at all true, it was only by an art establishment in thrall to the cult of the contemporary. He has always been popular with a wider public that knew him for his ‘submarine Dream’ series of lithographs or through the Coronation mugs and other ceramic designs that made him a postmortem presence in the homes of 1950s Britain.

At all events, he certainly has not been overlooked during the present century. There have been major exhibitions: in 2003 at the Imperial War Museum curated by Alan Powers; in 2015 at the Dulwich Picture Gallery curated by James Russell; and last year at Towner Art Gallery in eastbourne, his home town. There have also been less prominent, but very popular shows at Bristol and elsewhere and there have been numerous books. More will follow in the wake of the forthcoming Edward Bawden show at Dulwich.

Bawden and ravilious were the centre of the Great Bardfield Group of artists who settled in the essex village and, with their friends and associates—including the nash brothers, ravilious’ wife, Tirzah Garwood, and Thomas hennell, who, like him, died as a War Artist—they continued and expanded the English tradition of romantic landscape.