Dulwich Picture Gallery lines up major Eric Ravilious retrospective for summer 2015

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

A major Eric Ravilious watercolour retrospective is the summer exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery

a painting of a coastal view seen from a lighthouseEric Ravilious, Belle Tout Interior (1939). Watercolour and pencil on paper© Private Collection
Dulwich Picture Gallery is lining up a summer exhibition of more than 100 watercolours by Eric Ravilious in what promises to be the biggest showcase of the artist’s watercolour output ever staged in London.
 
Ravilious will be the first show to thoroughly examine a medium which he used to capture the atmosphere of peacetime and wartime England and preserve the fleeting passage of time.

Curated by James Russell, whose books and lectures on Ravilious have established him as a leading expert on the artist, the show will take a chronological approach, pausing to look at the objects and themes which fascinated an artist who enjoyed success as a designer and engraver but whose passion was watercolour.

Russell’s most recent curatorial outing was a co-curation at Towner Eastbourne in summer 2014 exploring the life and work of Ravilious’ friend and fellow artist Peggy Angus, whose summer cottage, Furlongs, on the Sussex Downs features heavily in the Ravilious story.

Promising an “assessment of Ravilious’ achievement as an artist of supreme skill”, the gallery says the show will focus on the watercolour output between 1925 and ended in 1942 – effectively the span of Ravilious' career, which was cut short when the air sea rescue mission he had accompanied as an official war artist failed to return to its base in Iceland.

Click below to launch a gallery of paintings from the forthcoming exhibition:


Describing Ravilious as “an artist who captured England between the wars like no other”, the gallery's Director, Ian AC Dejardin, said the watercolours conjured up a "nostalgic yet incisive" view of England through peace and war.

Famous works such as Train Landscape (1939) and Tea at Furlongs (1939) will accompany rarely seen works from private collections to provide a fresh look at Ravilious’ creative output and make the case for how Ravilious integrated rather than abandoned his instincts and ideas when appointed as a war artist in 1940.

The exhibition also recalls Ravilious’ 1939 show, at the prestigious Tooth and Sons’ Gallery in London, which was greeted warmly by critics, who described his work as ‘almost untranslatable’ and ‘magic, almost mystic’. Two-thirds of the 27 paintings exhibited will be displayed.

Loans have been secured from a number of lenders including Towner, The Fry Art Gallery, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Imperial War Museum, Tate, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Royal College of Art, The British Council and multiple private lenders.

  • Ravilious is at Dulwich Picture Gallery from April 1 - August 31 2015.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

More from Culture24's Painting and Drawing section:

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art revives the work of Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun

Tate unlocks vaults with worldwide access to unpublished archives of key British artists


Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk//art/painting-and-drawing/art512623-dulwich-picture-gallery-announces-major-eric-ravilious-retrospective-for-summer-2015

Keywords: Art Painting landscape watercolour England London

You might also like


Museums © 2014, All rights reserved Contact us