‘Sharp in detail, clean in colour’
ON September 5, 1942, Tirzah Ravilious received a letter from the Admiralty informing her that her husband ‘Temporary Captain Eric Ravilious, Royal Marines, has been reported missing since Wednesday last, September 2, 1942, when the aircraft in which he was a passenger failed to return from a patrol’. Seven months later (March 17, 1943), she received another letter, this time from his fellow artist Edward Bawden: ‘No one I know or have known seems to possess what he had, an almost flawless taste… But my dear Tirzah it is so much more than all that—I simply can’t tell you, or anyone else, or even myself what it is, or how much it is I miss by losing Eric…’ Bawden, who had only just
