I recently watched a fine documentary about the artist and designer Eric Ravilious. (‘Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War’ (2022), directed by Margy Kinmonth)

Ravilious was a cheerful soul with an observant eye and gentle touch. His design work was clear, concise and witty. His watercolours gave us an affectionate picture of England – at peace and war. He painted a world of serenity, stillness and restraint - at the same time both romantic and modern. And he had an extraordinary ability to recognise ordinary beauty.

Born in Acton in 1903, Ravilious was raised in Eastbourne where his parents ran an antiques shop. From an early age he was inclined towards art, recording in his notebook precise sketches of everyday objects: a scrubbing brush, bucket and boots; a candlestick, collar and tie.

Ravilious won scholarships to study wood engraving at Eastbourne School of Art and then the Royal College of Art. He went on to work as a commercial designer, creating illustrations for books, magazines and adverts. His woodcut of two Victorian gentlemen playing cricket has appeared on the front cover of every edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack since 1938. His ceramic designs for Wedgwood include commemorative coronation crockery and his much loved Alphabet mug. A is for Aeroplane, B is for Birdcage, C is for Cloud. The Y and Z - Yacht and Zeppelin - hide on the inside.

Although Ravilious’ commercial output was delightful, his clients could still be frustrating.

‘Wedgwood have given me some ceramics work. But I am sorry to say that the family think my beautiful designs above the heads of their public, and that to begin with something should be done which is safer and more understandable. I was for clean sweep, they were for a method of slow percolation.’

While earning a living from his design work, Ravilious also had a passion for watercolours. (He couldn’t stand oils, comparing them to toothpaste.)

He painted the countryside and village life of Essex and Sussex; gentle hills, ploughed fields and muddy tracks, under cold grey skies. Here are the ponds at East Dean and Wannock Dew; chalk paths twisting their way across the Downs; the vicarage at Castle Hedingham in the snow. A field-roller lies unattended. A delivery van pauses at a junction. Here’s Ravilious’ wife Tirzah shelling peas under a walnut tree, while her friend Charlotte is engrossed in her book. A man delivers coal to the back of the house. A woman beats a carpet in the shadows. A camp bed in the attic awaits a guest, in amongst the pot plants.

There is a timeless romanticism about Ravilious’ watercolours. But these are not cosy, traditional images. They often have an unsettling, haunted quality. And modern elements are consistently present. There are barbed wire fences, telegraph poles and cement pits. The ancient chalk horse on the hill at Westbury is seen from inside a third class railway compartment. In the yard old automobiles sit forlorn, hoping to be repaired.

Any item, any perspective, however mundane, presents possibility to Ravilious.

Sometimes the images of the late 1930s seem subtly to suggest impending crisis, peace soon to be disturbed. An empty room has the door flung open, as if someone has left in a hurry. The table in the back garden is set for tea, with an umbrella to hand just in case. 

At the outbreak of World War II Ravilious joined the Royal Observer Corps.

‘As the war was starting this morning I put myself down for observing, and started at 2-00 this afternoon. It’s looked on as an old man’s job, which depresses me rather. But it is useful in these parts, and may even be dangerous. Or enough to count.’

Ravilious clearly relished the opportunity to get away, to see strange sights, to immerse himself in his work.

‘I feel a stir in me that it is possible to really like drawing war activities. It interests me to the bone and marrow.’

Before long he was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee and given the rank of Honorary Captain in the Royal Marines. His military employment took him to docks, coastal defences, submarine stations and aerodromes all over the UK; and on a perilous naval mission to Norway. 

‘It was so nice working on deck long past midnight in bright sunshine. It never fell below the horizon. I do like this life and the people. It’s so remote and lovely in these parts. And the excitements above and below don’t interrupt much.’

Ravilious’ letters to Tirzah sustain the same jaunty tone. Perhaps he was putting on a brave face.

‘I’m going up to the cliffs twice a day like a man to the office. We’re bombed in the afternoons about 3-30, just as you want tea.’

Ravilious painted barrage balloons, magnetic mines and gun emplacements; docked destroyers in the dead of night; sentinels sitting among the sand bags; seaplanes seen through the sick bay window. A ship’s propeller rests on a railway trolley in the snow. Biplanes are reflected in puddles on the tarmac. Searchlights trace the night sky.

But Ravilious does not over-dramatise. He regards weapons of death and destruction with the same keen eye as he applies to agricultural implements. Each subject - a depth charge launcher, a fortified fishing vessel, an aircraft carrier - presents its own unique design challenge; its own particular beauty.

In August 1942 Ravilious was invited to visit RAF Station Kaldadarnes in Iceland. On the day he arrived, a plane had failed to return from patrol, and the next morning the artist joined the search party. He wrote a letter home before he set off.

‘I’ve just been offered a ride with a crew searching for a missing American plane. I intend to stay here drawing and painting ‘til Christmas. Goodbye Darling. I hope you feel well again. Take care of yourself. And kisses to the children. Eric.’

Ravilious’ aircraft did not return, and after four days the RAF declared him and the four-man crew lost in action. He was 39 years old.

For some 40 years after, Ravilious was a forgotten artist. It is only in recent decades that his reputation as a ‘romantic modern’ has been established. He teaches us to prize the landscape that surrounds us; to treasure the everyday sights of home; to find charm in the both the strange and familiar. And to approach life with a light heart and a love of beauty.

'Maybe we'll live and learn,
Maybe we'll crash and burn.
Maybe you'll stay, maybe you'll leave.
Maybe you'll return,
Maybe another fight.
Maybe we won't survive,
But maybe we'll grow.
We never know, baby, you and I.

We're just ordinary people,
We don't know which way to go.
'Cause we're ordinary people
Maybe we should take it slow.’

John Legend, 'Ordinary People’ (J Stephens / W Adams)

No. 413