ERIC RAVILIOUS: NEW YEAR SNOW

Eric Ravilious, New Year Snow, 1938, watercolour

 

 

I wrote the note below for Dreweatts, who were selling New Year Snow in their recent auction, Robert Kime: The Personal Collection...

This atmospheric watercolour depicts a picturesque valley in the Welsh borders and, at the same time, shows us a master at work.

Early in 1938 Ravilious travelled to Capel-y-Ffin, a hamlet in the Honddu valley not far from the ruins of Llanthony Priory. Having concentrated on illustration and design for a couple of years he was at last free to paint watercolours, and to take his time doing so. He had booked a room in the hamlet’s solitary farmhouse for two months, and looked forward to exploring a landscape that was wilder than his native Sussex.

Steeped as he was in the English watercolour tradition, Ravilious was well aware that JMW Turner, John Sell Cotman and other luminaries had painted the valley before him, although those earlier Romantic artists had tended to focus on the ruined abbey. A more recent visitor was artist-poet David Jones, who had stayed with Eric Gill and his entourage in Capel-y-Ffin in the 1920s. Ravilious admired the strong modern line and delicate palette of Jones’s watercolours, which present subjects similar to this but in a very different style.

In New Year Snow Ravilious presented a recognisable view south-east along the valley, towards the distinctive buttress of Loxidge Tump. He was no topographer, however, and here he redirected the course of the river so that it bends across the composition, roughly mirroring the curve of hills against the sky. Water, land and sky are painted with remarkable economy, with only the lightest of washes across the hilltops. Mostly the watercolour has been applied in single strokes, often with a dry brush. The white paper showing through suggests here rough grass dusted with snow and there the shimmer of moving water, while conveying at the same time a feeling of light-heartedness and freedom.

In place of the ruins beloved of Turner’s generation, we have the kind of man-made object that delighted Ravilious: a sheep feeder on wheels set centre stage and at a precarious angle. This positioning and the clarity of the draughtsmanship lend a slightly dreamlike quality to the scene.

In May 1939 Ravilious held his third exhibition of watercolours at the prestigious London gallery of Arthur Tooth and Son, the show that cemented his reputation. In The Observer, Jan Gordon praised Ravilious’s extraordinary technique, which made the most mundane object ‘appear as something magic, almost mystic, distilled out of the ordinary everyday.’ Twenty-seven watercolours are listed in the catalogue; New Year Snow is No. 1.

I can't remember the exact figure, but the work ended up selling for over £300,000... New Year Snow is featured in my book Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist, published by The Mainstone Press.