The English engraver and watercolor writer Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) was almost forgotten by the artistic establishment for decades after his death, until his children found a stack of paintings under a bed in the 1970s. The new documentary Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War is just the latest performance of, as it were, a Ravil aissance, following a 2015 exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, his first major one since 1940, which ‘ made a case for this deceptively gentle painter as a neglected master.
As Alan Bennett argues on screen: “I find it hard to say what it’s like to be English, but Ravilious is part of it.” Although his work has a superficially serene charm, it also looks at the sky with an attitude of turbulent foreboding, perfectly suited to the era in which he lived.
In one of his most famous pieces, Tea at Furlongs (1939), a table on a Sussex lawn is set with all the accessories an English afternoon needs. But where * is * everyone? The picture’s ominous depopulation, clarity and the inconsistent gray umbrella lurking along the side make it all but cozy. It feels like a storm is on its way: in an inspired version of Bennett, it might as well be titled “Munich 1938”.
Modest in his approach, this cinematic portrait takes shape as both biography and love story. Director Margy Kinmonth uses the letters between Ravilious and his long-suffering wife, co-artist Tirzah Garwood, as a striking narrative backbone, while also interviewing their surviving family, and a handful of well-known superfans – Bennett, Grayson Perry, Ai Weiwei – who individually teasing out what his art means to them.
The early years of Garwood and Ravilious’s marriage were shaken by his relationships with other women, two of whom were particularly protracted. It must have been all the more painful for Garwood as she sacrificed her own talent for engraving to support her husband’s career. They eventually had two children, whom she raised virtually alone during the war years, when Ravilious (alongside people like Henry Moore, and his own great mentor Paul Nash) was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee.