Eric Ravilious
Ella Ravilious
(Thames & Hudson/ V&A, £14.99)
ERIC RAVILIOUS disappeared from the radar in 1942, on a lost search mission flying over Iceland, yet his idiosyncratic images remain instantly recognisable and increasingly popular among those who look back fondly to the 1930s revival of Romanticism. His jolly pub façades, brick rectories, greenhouses, bathing machines, iron bedsteads, biplanes and downland chalk figures project a nostalgic view of Englishness that continues to delight.
The recent boost to his reputation owes much to a series of exhibitions and publications, notably by Alan Powers and James Russell. This latest book comes from the artist’s granddaughter, appropriately curator of architecture and design at the V&A Museum, which owns many of Ravilious’s works, and reproduces 10 plates alongside Ella Ravilious’s comprehensive texts.
Ravilious belonged to the generation of Royal College of Art students famously described by Paul Nash as an ‘outbreak of talent’. He showed a precocious gift for wood engraving and, from
