Ravilious and the Downs

Eric Ravilious was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. He grew up in East Sussex, and is particularly known for his distinctive watercolours of the South Downs and other English landscapes.

Ravilious was born in 1903, and grew up in Sussex. In 1919 he won a scholarship to Eastbourne School of Art and in 1922 another to study at the Design School at the Royal College of Art. There he became close friends with artist and illustrator Edward Bawden and, from 1924, studied under Paul Nash. Nash, an enthusiast for wood-engraving, encouraged him in the technique, and was impressed enough by his work to propose him for membership of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1925, and helped him to get commissions.

Ravilious was widely admired for his many book illustrations and his ceramic designs, as well as for his paintings. However it is for his watercolours of the South Downs and other English landscapes, which examine English landscape and vernacular art with an off-kilter, modernist sensibility and clarity, for which he is best known.

He served as a war artist, and died in 1942 when the aircraft he was in was lost off Iceland.