Eric Ravilious: Road by an Airfield, 1942

Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) was an English painter, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver. He grew up in Sussex, and is particularly known for his watercolours of the South Downs. The countryside of Sussex and the Essex were his main subjects. As he disliked both bright sunlight and the colour green he preferred to paint under grey or cloudy skies, and in winter. Ravilious was a brilliant watercolourist, lithographer and designer, but above all was a wood engraver. It was in this medium that he first found artistic expression in the early 1920s, and over the next two decades produced some of the finest engravings of the age.

As well as woodcuts, he engraved more than four hundred illustrations and drew over forty lithographic designs for books and publications during his lifetime. In 1936 he was invited by Wedgwood to make designs for ceramics, many of which were used on commemorative mugs for the coronations of Edward V111, later revised for the coronation of George V1, and again reworked for Elizabeth 11 in 1953.  He also undertook glass designs for Stuart Crystal, graphic advertisements for London Transport and furniture work for Dunbar Hay. He was appointed as an official war artist in December 1939, and was given the rank of Honorary Captain in the Royal Marines and assigned to the Admiralty. He died, at the age of 39, when the aircraft he was on was lost off Iceland in 1942.

Road by an Airfield, started in 1942, is an unfinished work as can be seen in pencil outlines of planes behind the trees. Ravilious found the planes inspiring, intrigued by their seemingly fragile appearance, and the pencil outline in this work emphasises their vulnerability. On the 9th of May 1942, from RAF Officers Mess, Sawbridgeworth, Ravilious wrote a letter to his wife Tirzah with these words: “The weather gets finer all the time but I feel bored with pictures of planes on the ground and want to go flying.”

the above text appears on the back of the card
HC-1072: card size 7" x 5" (178mm x 127mm)