Eric Ravilious: Artist and Designer

Product Information

The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. Watercolourist, wood engraver, lithographer and mural decorator, Eric Ravilious was born in Acton but grew up in Eastbourne, Sussex, where he studied until receipt of a scholarship to the Royal College of Art.

This books draws together the fascinating life of Eric Ravilious, whose work is a more than just a glimpse at social history. Although a brilliant watercolourist, and designer, Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) was above all a wood engraver.

His engagement with nature, though romantic rather than precise, pervades his works in many different techniques. Stanley Spencer One of Britain’s most significant painters, Sir Stanley Spencer is celebrated for his garden landscapes, his raw depictions of personal life and his interpretations of biblical narrative – all set in his beloved birthplace, the village of Cookham, Berkshire. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time.

Ravilious is well known to a circle of collectors and admirers who feel no need to explain his work. In addition to being a straight retrospective the book interprets Ravilious’s work on the basis of documentary sources and more recent readings of art and ideas. M. Richards pointed out in the foreword to the 1938 book, all real places, but in many cases we are given only tantalising clues as to their name or location.This book is sure to be the most comprehensive and well-informed survey of Ravilious's entire oeuvre. His engagement with nature was romantic rather than precise, and he used many different techniques to express his appreciation of the natural world, as seen here in over 100 images drawn from the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum. As Marian Barbour commented, “While Shephard’s early work was bleakly linear, in the late 1930s and 1940s this gave way to the more painterly style, cool and tonal in the Euston Road tradition that derived from Sickert.