Random Spectacular #2

Cover of Random Spectacular #2 by Jonny Hannah

Amazingly, almost four years have passed since St Judes published Random Spectacular, a delightfully eclectic collection of words and pictures that reminded me of the old Saturday Books. The edition sold out so quickly that everyone was taken by surprise, not least editor Simon Lewin, and some St Judes devotees were unable to get hold of a copy.

This time around, Simon is taking the unusual step of basing the edition size on the apparent demand. Anyone interested in buying a copy should trot along to the St Judes website and enter their email address. NB this doesn't mean they're guaranteed a copy, but they will be sent payment information by email when Random Spectacular #2 is published in August 2014.

There are some treats in store for fans of Mark Hearld, Emily Sutton, Angie Lewin and numerous other artists, and the whole book is beautifully designed. I was delighted when Simon asked me to write something on Eric Ravilious's submarine lithographs: look out for some gorgeous full page reproductions.

FFI: St Judes

Some Pictures of Submarines

Last week I gave a talk at the National Maritime Museum about 'Ravilious: Submarine', which was illustrated with various pictures borrowed from the Imperial War Museum's online collection. They have the most astonishing array of images, and I'm very grateful that they allow non-commercial use. Anyway, here are some of the photos...

Not fun: a trainee submariner learns how to use Davis Submarine Escape Apparatus at HMS Dolphin, Gosport

New recruits arrive at HMS Dolphin, Gosport

L-class submarines, HMS Dolphin

Control Room, WWII submarine

Submariners worked, ate and slept wherever they could - note hanging teacups

The Ward Room - the officer in the middle is Peter Young, in peacetime Penguin's production manager

Motor room, with engine room beyond

The Commander of HMS Snapper hard at work

Occasionally someone else had a go, in this case the Bishop of Liverpool

Successes were recorded on the Jolly Roger carried by every sub -
That's what happens when you label submariners 'pirates' as Admiral
Arthur Wilson did early in the century...

David Inshaw, Roland Collins... & Picasso at the Courtauld

David Inshaw: Bonfire, Tree, Moon & Firework, 2012 

Yesterday I finally got to see David Inshaw's unsettling masterpiece 'The Badminton Game' in person, hanging in its rightful place on a gallery wall. Meticulously painted with a crazy sort of pointillist-meets-pre-Raphaelite attention to detail, it transforms a summery moment into a scene that is both whimsical and ominous. This sense of something unknown lurking behind an otherwise beautiful scene gives David's best work its attention-holding power, and if you're a fan of British landscape painting, post-war art in general or just wonderful pictures, I would hightail down New Bond Street to the Fine Art Society and have a look at the exhibition.

The Fine Art Society, with Badminton Game and mink.

Some of the figures are good, particularly the triptych of a woman draped in a towel, but I think the countryside brings out the best in an artist whose work is in the great tradition of visionary British landscape painters. Like Paul Nash he has a peculiar feeling for trees, and like Eric Ravilious he finds imaginative ways to explore chalk figures - particularly the Cerne Abbas giant. Crows in flight, bonfires, cliffs and water-filled ditches are all presented coolly and without fuss, yet each motif is charged with ambiguous emotions.

15 Paintings by David Inhaw, Fine Art Society (a bit dark, sorry)

If you want to know more, have a look at what Andrew Lambirth has to say, visit David's website, or best of all go along to the show.

Meanwhile, in another part of the city... in fact just round the corner in Cork Street, Browse and Darby have an exhibition of work by Roland Collins, who at the age of 94 is enjoying a well-deserved popularity. After a sold-out show at Mascalls last year he has recently exhibited at the Rye Art Gallery, and now has this small but lovely London exhibition.

Roland Collins, Belgrave Mews

His are paintings that do better with fairly subtle lighting, so that the colours are more natural, and this is the case here. Rather than being dazzled you can focus on his wonderful compositions, the best of which draw the eye through the foreground into some half-hidden scene behind. This show also features watercolours from the early part of his career - in the late 1930s - so you can see how his work exploded into life after the war, when he loosened up and grew more bold.

Roland Collins, A Shore Off the Yacht Club, Whitstable

Meanwhile, in another part of the city... As I had a little time before going to Greenwich to talk about 'Ravilious: Submarine', I trotted along to the Courtauld Gallery - surely one of the most civilized places in London. In fact it's more or less the perfect art museum, being small, fairly quiet and full of interest. Trying to order a cup of tea in the cafe proved to be a bit of a challenge, but then I was able to sit outside and look up at the sky...

If you have a friend who is interested in art history but intimidated by the vastness of most museums, the Courtauld is the perfect place to start. Starting at the bottom and working your way up through the three floors you see examples of work from diverse periods in European art, from the 14th century to the 20th. It's unusual to see such a carefully selected group of pictures covering such a wide time-frame, and fascinating to chart developments and influences.

It struck me that the figures in the current exhibition, Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901, have much in common with the very earliest pictures in the collection, being simplified and expressive. The overwhelming impression, though, was of the Spaniard's sheer energy; accompanying photos show the maniacal light in his eyes, while the paintings themselves are bursting with life. One day, I think, people will look at Picasso's more grotesque work and wonder what all the fuss was about, but in these youthful paintings his brilliance, emotional power and vitality is clear to see.

View of the Courtauld, with melancholy barmaid

Still, the picture I spent longest enjoying was 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergere'. A couple were very earnestly discussing the fact that the girl's reflection isn't quite right - it should be directly behind, perhaps, rather than off to the side. Meanwhile, the barmaid gazed out, as she has done for more than a century, waiting without much hope for her shift to be over.

Three Dates for April

By a strange quirk of planning I'm doing talks on three consecutive Thursdays next month, each one rather different from the rest.

I'm delighted to be speaking at Bankside Gallery in London on April 11, at the invitation of the Royal Watercolour Society, on the subject of Eric Ravilious: Travelling Artist. This is the theme of the fourth book in the Ravilious in Pictures series (which was supposed to be a trilogy) and it's great fun to talk about. Rav was a talented letter writer with a wonderful sense of humour, so there's plenty of opportunity to go behind the scenes of his pictures and find out what he was up to, and with whom.

This talk has SOLD OUT, so apologies if you've missed out this time.

All change the following week, when (on April 18) I'm travelling to Chichester to give a talk on Paul Nash at the Pallant House Gallery. I'm excited about this one too, partly because Pallant is such a fabulous institutions and partly because my lecture coincides with an exhibition of Paul Nash prints, photographs, collage and books from a collection that once belonged to his great patron and friend Clare Neilson. It sounds as though there's some fabulous stuff in the collection, which was donated by Clare's godson Jeremy Greenwood and Alan Swerdlow, through the Art Fund, and I'm looking forward to seeing it.

My talk will be based on 'Paul Nash in Pictures: Landscape and Dream', but will focus particularly on Nash's long friendship with Clare Neilson.

It's back to Ravilious, then, for the final leg, and for me an opportunity to talk about my new book, 'Ravilious: Submarine', at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (free, but you need to book). I wanted to do this partly because NMM staff were so helpful when we were putting the book together, plus I used to live in Greenwich and walk past the Museum every day, so there's a bit of nostalgia involved! I'll be talking about both the making of the Submarine Series and about life aboard a Royal Navy submarine during World War II, so it should be fun.

Win 'Ravilious: Submarine'!

Photo of 'Ravilious: Submarine' at the Bristol City Docks by Dru Marland

Since 2006 the Mainstone Press has published ten books. 'Ravilious: Submarine' is the tenth, but can you name the other nine? If you think you can, send the list of titles to info@themainstonepress.com before Monday 25th February. The first three correct answers out of the hat will win a copy of 'Ravilious: Submarine'.

There's more information on the book below and here.

27.2.13 Congratulations to the three winners and thankyou everyone who entered - watch the Facebook page for future competitions.

'Ravilious: Submarine': First Pictures!

The traditional lo-fi photo shoot on the kitchen table... Very excited to see 'Ravilious: Submarine', which has been beautifully printed and bound in, respectively, Norwich and London.

For further information, please contact the publishers at www.themainstonepress.com.

Ravilious at St Bride Library

A wonderful evening in store at the St Bride Library, off Fleet Street. We'll be talking about the fantastic interwar boom in auto-lithography - a form of lithography that involves artists working directly on the stone or plate - and showing all kinds of fabulous pictures.

Joe Pearson is the author of 'Drawn Direct to the Plate', which tells the story of Noel Carrington and the Puffin Picture Books, while Alan Powers has written books on the Curwen Press and related subjects. I'm looking forward to seeing what pictures they dig out of their archives and bring along...

I'll be talking about 'Ravilious: Submarine' and showing both the prints themselves and a selection of preliminary drawings - some of them beautiful works of art in their own right. Do come along and support the work of the St Bride Foundation, a unique institution devoted to typography, print culture and graphic design - past and present.

'RAVILIOUS: SUBMARINE' OUT SOON!

Remembering Eric Ravilious (1903-42)

Eric Ravilious, Hurricanes in Flight, 1942 (DACS/Artist's Estate)

On 2nd September 1942 Eric Ravilious disappeared, along with four British airmen, when their Hudson aircraft failed to return from an air-sea rescue mission off the coast of Iceland. He had only just arrived at RAF Kaldadarnes, whence he had been posted at his own request and with the blessing of Kenneth Clark, head of the War Artists' Advisory Committee, who admired the work he had done two years earlier off the Norwegian coast. One can only imagine that he volunteered to join the air-sea rescue flight in the hope of capturing the moment of rescue.

This Sunday, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the artist's disappearance, Alan Powers and I will each be giving an illustrated talk at the Birley Centre in Eastbourne, for the Friends of the Towner Art Gallery. I will be exploring the life and work of Ravilious the watercolourist, looking in depth at a number of his Sussex pictures and endeavouring to give a flavour of the artist and his times. There's a tendency these days to see him as rather an austere character - a haunter of solitary Downland ways - and I hope to show him as someone much more human, brilliant but down to earth.

Ravilious in uniform

Alan will then explore his work as a designer and, in particular, the reception of this work by his peers. What kind of reputation did Ravilious enjoy during his lifetime? How was his work perceived in the years following his disappearance? I'm greatly looking forward to hearing what Alan has to say on this subject, since I've always found it rather perplexing that an artist of such obvious talent could disappear so thoroughly from view for several decades.

I appreciate that fashions change, but I find it hard to believe that the people who enjoyed David Inshaw's work so much in the 1970s wouldn't have flocked to a Ravilious show. How could the painter of 'Train Landscape' and 'Chalk Paths', not to mention the designer of the Alphabet series, fall so far out of favour? All I can think of is that, with no monograph to encourage interest and only the occasional exhibition, people just didn't know about him. That they do now is thanks primarily to Anne Ullmann, Eric's daughter, who edited two major books on his work for the Fleece Press.

Anne was only a toddler when her father disappeared, but though she may have been too young to remember him properly, I wonder whether some recollection of his presence stayed with her. Few people remain alive who remember Eric Ravilious, however there have been in recent years several rather miraculous instances of lost artworks and artifacts returning from oblivion. Last year it was his dummy for a Puffin Picture Book on White Horses, and a few years before that a pair of early watercolours that turned up among the effects of a collector in Surrey.

On Tuesday 4th September a new find is up for auction at Sworders' auction house in Stanton Mountfitchet: five of the auto-lithographs made by Ravilious in 1940/41 and known nowadays as the Submarine Series. These were apparently found shoved down the side of a bed in north London, though whose bed it was and how they got there I have no idea. Sworders had great success with the White Horse Dummy, which was bought by the Museum of Wiltshire Life in Devizes, and they're hoping the new find will prove equally popular.

Eric Ravilious, Introductory Drawing (aka Submarine Dream), auto-lithograph, 1941

It is important to stress that these are not lithographs made by a printer from the artist's design but auto-lithographs. Ravilious himself prepared the plates for printing and then worked closely with the lithography team at WS Cowell's printing works in Ipswich. Unlike traditional prints, like etchings, which are sold in a numbered edition of very similar prints, these submarine lithographs are unnumbered and (mostly) unsigned, but the artist's presence can be felt strongly in the way they vary across the edition - in colour, tone and minor details. About fifty sets of ten were printed, one of which can be seen at the Fry Art Gallery.

Whether these five prints end up in a public institution or in a private collection, it's wonderful that they have reappeared after so long, to be enjoyed as they should be. And don't despair if you're not planning to bid: the full Submarine Series plus a number of the artist's preparatory drawings will be published this autumn by the Mainstone Press in a beautiful new book, 'Ravilious: Submarine'.

Ravilious: Submarine

Eric Ravilious, Commander... Looking through a Periscope, 1941

I'm hard at work on an exciting project, which is proving as much an adventure of discovery as the 'Ravilious in Pictures' books. For some time now Tim Mainstone and I have been plotting a book about the artist's second major foray into lithography, the set of prints he made in 1940/41 while working as a war artist. Known as the Submarine Series, these are, like the illustrations of shops in 'High Street', auto-lithographs. Ravilious made them himself, rather than handing his artwork over to a master lithographer, and individual prints vary widely across the edition, reflecting his tinkering during the printing process. Each one has the status of an original work of art, rather than a reproduction.

Most of the ten pictures show submariners at work or rest aboard their craft, while others focus on the kind of quirky subjects Ravilious enjoyed: the arcane equipment used by mine disposal experts or a diver preparing for the water.

The full set was on show at the Royal West of England Academy during their recent Ravilious show, and I was interested to learn from observant museum staff that the lithos were the most popular works, particularly among more youthful visitors. They are in some ways quite unlike his landscapes, being bold in colour and focused on people rather than place, but you can see the same economical designer's eye at work. Compare one of these interiors with, say, Barnett Freedman's interpretation of a similar scene, and you can see how much detail Ravilious has stripped away in his quest for clarity.

Barnett Freedman, Interior of a Submarine, watercolour, 1943 (Tate)

He had been rather taken to task when his magnificent paintings of the ill-fated Norwegian expedition of May 1940 were exhibited at the National Gallery, with critics suggesting that he was more interested in the effects of light in the far north than he was in the human drama of war. I think this was his response. In the best war art - like Paul Nash's visions of the Passchendaele battlefield - the artist's technique fits the subject matter so well that the finished picture serves both as a record of what a particular place or experience was LIKE and as a work of art in its own right. Nash's pictures of Flanders were beautiful and at the same time perfectly evocative of 'the phantasmagoria of No Man's Land', as one critic put it; similarly, the lithographs in the Submarine Series are beautifully designed and executed artworks that capture the intensity and human drama of the war beneath the waves.

Eric Ravilious, Diving Controls No.1, 1941

Anyway, the adventure for me - quite apart from discovering strange and wonderful details of the submariner's life - has been in learning about the extraordinary flowering of auto-lithography among British artists in the mid-20th century. The period from about 1930 until well after World War Two saw artists taking up the challenge of making their own lithographic prints, and some of the results are gorgeous. I just bought a copy of George Borrow's eccentric classic 'Lavengro', which was printed at the Curwen Press in Plaistow, Essex, in 1936 and illustrated with colour lithos by Ravilious's good friend Barnett Freedman. What a wonderful book! There's lots to say about Borrow and Freedman, but to start with, have a look at this.

From what I've seen of the preliminary design ideas, 'Ravilious: Submarine' is going to be stunning, illustrated not only with the Submarine Series and preparatory drawings but also with examples - some rarely seen - of lithography from Britain, Russia and France. Having said that, I better get back to work!

'Ravilious: Submarine' will be published by the Mainstone Press in October.


St Bride's Print Library will be hosting an evening devoted to early/mid 20th century lithography on December 5th. I'll be talking about the Submarine Series, while Alan Powers and Joe Pearson - an authority on Noel Carrington and the Puffin Picture Books - will discuss other fascinating aspects of the subject. More info on this to follow...