Art & Austerity: Lyons Lithographs at Towner

Barnett Freedman, People

One of the art shows of the summer opens at Towner in Eastbourne tomorrow. I'm going to see it next week, and meanwhile I've been enjoying 'Tea and a Slice of Art', Charlie Batchelor's book about the Lyons Lithographs. A full set of these wonderful pictures, commissioned in the post-war years by J. Lyons & Co. to decorate neglected tearooms, is being exhibited, with work by a host of wonderful artists. There's a fascinating article about in The Guardian, and for the background story about lithography in Britain in the mid-20th century, you might want to look at 'Ravilious: Submarine'. Rav would have been one of the first artists commissioned for this fabulously British project, but he died five years before the first pictures appeared on the walls of Lyons tearooms around the country...

John Nash, Landscape with Bathers

Michael Ayrton, The Spectators

Edward Ardizzone, The Railway Station

Charles Mozley, Henley

John Minton, Apple Orchard, Kent

 L.S. Lowry, Industrial Scene

The Lyons Teashops Lithographs: Art at a Time of Austerity runs at Towner, Eastbourne until September.

Eye 85, Russian Picture Books & 'Ravilious: Submarine'

Cover of 'Hunting' by Vladimir Lebedev, 1925

I was very excited to come home last night and find a copy of Eye 85 waiting for me - my phone is unwell so I can't post photos of it just yet. For readers not involved in the heady world of graphic design, Eye is a beautifully crafted, eclectic, entertaining magazine aimed primarily at inhabitants of that world. It says something both for the vision of editor John Walters and for the level of interest in 20th century illustration and design that I was commissioned to write something on lithographed children's books for this issue: you'll find 'Puffins on the Plate' on page 62, with an online extract here.

Vladimir Lebedev, Yesterday and Today, 1928

The feature looks great, with the gorgeous old Russian and French books shown by art director Simon Esterson as the time-worn artifacts they are - Clare Walters' related feature on wordless children's books is also beautifully laid out. What readers of Eye might not grasp is that my article is based on research I carried out for my latest book, 'Ravilious: Submarine', the first half of which is devoted to the history of 20th century artist lithography, or auto-lithography, and in particular its use in the production of children's books.

Barnett Freedman, Advert for Baynard Press 

'Ravilious: Submarine' features work by Nathalie Parain, Feodor Rojankovsky and Vladimir Lebedev as well as lovely illustrations made by Barnett Freedman, Pearl Binder, Edward Bawden, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Helen Binyon and others - the pictures in this post are all included. One of the main aims of the book is to show how Ravilious came to make lithographs, and it became very clear as Tim and I were working on the book that he was part of a widespread and energetic movement.

Pearl Binder, A Restaurant in Brick Lane, 1932 

Thanks to left-leaning friends like Peggy Angus, Ravilious knew about the children's books pioneered in the early days of Soviet Russia, and owned several titles; as soon as he tried lithography for himself he was hooked. Finding a kindred spirit in publisher Noel Carrington he transformed 'High Street' from a book of wood engravings (as was first intended) into a dazzling collection of lithographed shop fronts and interiors; Ravilious started work on a Puffin Picture Book  but was lost in action before he could turn his glorious watercolours of chalk figures into a lithographed book. He did, however, create the beautiful Submarine Series, which is reproduced in full in the book, alongside some lovely preparatory drawings.

Eric Ravilious, Submarine Dream, 1941

The pictures in this post are taken from 'Ravilious: Submarine', published by The Mainstone Press. Copyright remains with the artist's estates.

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...