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Coming soon!
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John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace
John Nash, The Cornfield, 1918 (Tate)
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Mackerel Sky: a Ravilious Rediscovered
Eric Ravilious, Mackerel Sky, 1938, private collectionThis radiant watercolour was for many years thought to be missing, when it was in fact hanging quietly in a collector’s home. Like many of his contemporaries Ravilious was intrigued by ‘nautical style’, as John Piper put it, and often turned his gaze to lighthouses, boats and bathing machines. Here he contrasts the familiar shapes of fishing
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Seaside Modern: Walkies
Pat Faulkener, Heather Odd, Michele Morize, Barbara Hunt and Wendy Spenceley, Ramsgate, 1959. © SEAS Photography / Wendy Arnhiem.Life on the beach has been documented by photographers for over a century. Early on, only the wealthiest beach-goers could afford to take pictures (or shoot cine film) themselves, or to have them taken, but by the late 1930s beach photographers had become a feature of
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Seaside Modern Lecture
Eric Ravilious, Mackerel Sky, 1938, watercolour Whether you've been to Seaside Modern at Hastings Contemporary, are planning to go or wish you could go but can't, you might enjoy my online lecture next week. It includes many of the artworks in the show along with works that were either unavailable or couldn't be squeezed in, and there are more archive photos and that kind of thing.When I was
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Eric Ravilious: Downland Man - opens 25 Sept!!
Front cover, catalogue of Eric Ravilious: Downland Man exhibition Almost a decade after Wiltshire Museum director David Dawson suggested the idea, Eric Ravilious: Downland Man is set to open at said venue on 25 September. Having been forced to delay the exhibition by a year because of Covid I'm excited to be hanging the show this month, especially as there are one or two works I haven't seen for
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Dates for December!
A couple of lecture dates for December:Eric Ravilious: Downland Man is on 2nd December, via zoom, hosted by the Wiltshire Museum. Tickets and information are available on the museum's website.The chalk downland of southern England inspired Eric Ravilious (1903-42)
to produce some of his finest watercolours, but his fascination for the
Downs ran deeper. Until January 2022 Wiltshire Museum is
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Eric Ravilious: Art and Life on Zoom!
Eric Ravilious, Train Landscape, 1939, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum Please join me for a feature-length online introduction to the life and work of the much-loved artist and designer. Two 45-minute lectures with interval! Eric Ravilious was only 39 when he died on active service as a war artist in 1942, but he had already achieved incredible things. This colourful two-part lecture explores the
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Eric Ravilious: HMS Glorious in the Arctic
Eric Ravilious, HMS Glorious in the Arctic, 1940 (Imperial War Museum) Brightly lit by the midnight sun, aeroplanes swoop and soar around the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, circling like Arctic terns against the incandescent sky. But if the treatment of the aircraft is playful, the jagged white light that cuts across the surface of the water adds urgency to the painting, reminding us that the
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Inspired by the Boy: In Conversation with Angie Lewin
A Ravilious Coronation Mug features in this linocut by Angie LewinI'm looking forward to joining artist and designer Angie Lewin on March 23 for an online event exploring her career-long fascination for Eric Ravilious. With Kirsty Rodda of Hampshire Cultural Trust keeping us in order, we will spend an hour looking in-depth at Rav's achievements in wood engraving, watercolour and ceramic design. I
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SEAFARING EXHIBITION AT HASTINGS CONTEMPORARY!
Richard Eurich, Survivors from a Torpedoed Ship, 1942, Tate From fishermen to submariners, migrants to merchant seamen, people throughout the ages have shared the experience of being at sea. Seafaring explores the perils and pleasures of life at sea, while at the same time taking visitors on an art historical voyage from the early 19th century to the present.At the heart of the exhibition is Lost
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David Remfry: Watercolour - New Book and Exhibition!
Over his long and successful career David Remfry MBE RA RWS has
achieved a mastery of watercolour that few have matched. Unusually for
the medium, he works on a large scale and often focuses on people,
exploring the dance hall and the nightclub in breathtaking images that
are at once beautiful and edgy.
This book is the first full-length monograph devoted to the artist's
watercolours. Its
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ERIC RAVILIOUS: DRAWN TO WAR
The private view of the 2015 Ravilious exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery was a bit of a blur, but one moment that stuck in my mind was meeting Margy Kinmonth for the first time. I had really enjoyed her film about LS Lowry, and when she appeared out of the crowd that evening and said she was making a film about Ravilious I was intrigued.Not long after that we met up and had a chat about the
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THOUGHTS ON 'ERIC RAVILIOUS: DRAWN TO WAR'
Eric Ravilious, Submarine Commander Looking Through a Periscope, lithograph, 1940-41 I'm sure you've had the experience of watching the film version of a novel you love... and wishing you hadn't. It took me years to see The English Patient, so powerful was my own impression of the story, and I've still never seen The Great Gatsby on screen. I don't know if there's a film of Ulysses or To the
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Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War - Director Margy Kinmonth in Conversation!
I'm very much looking forward to discussing 'Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War' with the film's director Margy Kinmonth, on Weds 6 July. Since we've talked about the film a lot over the past few years we thought it would be fun to have a fairly informal chat about the making of the film, with some behind-the-scenes pictures and discussion of our favourite Ravilious works. We're actually doing a live
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Seafaring: the Movie!
Well it's less than a minute long, but I think this is a great introduction to my exhibition Seafaring, which runs at Hastings Contemporary until the autumn. Made by Ali Jassim - who can find on Instagram as @just_jassim - the film follows two young visitors as they tour the exhibition, stopping to look at an array of works by artists such as Cecily Brown, Eric Ravilious and Maggi
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New Exhibition: Changing Times at The Higgins Bedford!
From Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and Paul Nash to Elisabeth Frink,
David Hockney and Lucian Freud some of the biggest names in British art are
coming together in a vibrant, wide-ranging exhibition at The Higgins Bedford that
explores the history of British art of the 20th and 21st
centuries.
Changing
Times: A Century of Modern British Art brings together more than 80 works from the
Ingram
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Talking Books: Revisiting Modern British Art
This time last year I was busy writing the introductory essay for a remarkable book. Revisiting Modern British Art is not a traditional art history book, being neither a historical survey nor a study of a particular artist or group. Rather, as the title suggests, it is a book which revisits a familiar period and seeks to understand it differently. Each of the writers brings their own expertise
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Ravilious Pilot Boat up for auction!
Eric Ravilious, Pilot Boat, 1939Having spent some time in a private collection in the United States, Pilot Boat is back in the UK and up for auction at Sotheby's. I'm not sure I've ever seen this watercolour in person so I'm looking forward to visiting on Sunday, when I join Frances Christie and Simon Martin for a panel discussion about Place in Modern British Art (see previous post for details).
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Paul Nash's English Pyramids
If you're an admirer of Paul Nash then this new book may already be on your radar, but I would also recommend it to people who don't know much about the debonair but sometimes challenging British artist. Pyramids in England has the two main characteristics of a good art book: a wide range of images that are excellently reproduced; and just the right amount of brisk, readable text.The author has
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