Ravilious through the Eyes of his Contemporaries

Eric Ravilious’s watercolours are better loved than ever, yet the man behind them – killed on active service in 1942, aged thirty-nine – can seem elusive. This anthology gathers more than thirty texts by friends, fellow artists and admirers, several published here for the first time, to build a fuller and warmer portrait.

Introduced by Alan Powers, the selection runs from a 1927 Times exhibition review to a 2012 recollection by the painter David Hepher, whose parents knew the Raviliouses. Royal College of Art contemporaries Edward Bawden, Peggy Angus and Enid Marx share their memories, and Ravilious’s own ‘Preface by the Engraver’ from the 1929 Monotype Almanack – the only text he published in his lifetime – appears in full. Essays and critical writing from before and after the war range across his whole practice, from wood engraving to lithography.

Published by The Mainstone Press.

• 144 pages
• Page size 300 × 234 mm
• Paperback
• 170 illustrations and photographs
• Printed and bound in the UK