Ravilious on the BBC Antiques Roadshow: Newhaven Harbour

Viewers of the Antiques Roadshow last night were treated to a wonderful sight: Ravilious's 'homage to Seurat', the lithograph 'Newhaven Harbour' (about 19 mins into the programme). Its owner had apparently trimmed the picture so it would fit in a clip frame, leaving a protruding corner bearing the artist's signature. There were a few things the presenter didn't mention, the most important being that 'Newhaven Harbour' is an auto-lithograph, ie everything from the initial drawing to the colour separations and the printing itself was done or closely supervised by Ravilious himself.

This was his first attempt, and he went on to achieve great success in the medium, first with his 1938 book 'High Street' and then with a stunning wartime series based around submarine interiors and related subjects. We'll be coming back to this subject, but in the meantime here's an excerpt from 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist':

Eric Ravilious, Newhaven Harbour, 1935-6, lithograph

Newhaven Harbour

While staying in Newhaven Ravilious got up early to avoid the crowds, and one morning sketched a steamer entering the harbour from the open sea. His pleasure in the fresh dawn light is palpable, and one senses that the peculiar radiance of the marine sunrise attracted him to the south coast as much as the port architecture and the ships. Many of his best paintings were begun at dawn, and if he had one overriding ambition as a watercolourist it was perhaps to capture in pigment the subtle brilliance of sunrise.

Yet this is not a painting but the artist’s first excursion into lithography, a medium exploited successfully in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and subsequently imported to Britain, where it was used in book illustration and in the production of advertising posters by organisations like Shell and London Transport. It was Robert Wellington, of the Zwemmer Gallery in London, who first suggested selling lithographs made by contemporary British artists to education authorities and schools, thus introducing children to original work by living artists.

Together with John Piper, Wellington set up Contemporary Lithographs and commissioned ten artists, including Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Paul and John Nash, Graham Sutherland and Norah McGuiness, to produce lithographs at the Curwen Press in Plaistow, Essex. Not all chose to become closely involved in the process, but Ravilious rose to the challenge and in September 1936 was working, under the expert tutelage of Harold Curwen, on his first stone. Ravilious was delighted both with lithography itself and with the works atmosphere of the Press, and he went on to explore this method of printing further in 'High Street', his 1938 book of shops.

Here he has reimagined the topography of the harbour so that the sunlit walls encircle a pool of blue water, creating an idyllic destination for the approaching ship; it is difficult to imagine waves breaking over the wall to the right, as they did the night Ravilious ventured out in the storm. The red bands painted on the lighthouses and the warm colours of the foreground add to the welcoming atmosphere, although there are no people here, not even a seagull. Only the incoming ship offers the prospect of life, noise and activity. Ravilious called this his ‘Homage to Seurat’, and if the arches on the right suggest de Chirico, the picture as a whole recalls Seurat’s spare, unpeopled paintings of Honfleur and other Channel ports.

In January 1937 the first set of Contemporary Lithographs were exhibited, to enthusiastic reviews. ‘The series of ten is extremely promising,’ The New Statesman commented. ‘There is something in fact for every sort of taste except bad taste...’

A second series followed, with work by 14 broadly representational artists including the New Zealand-born painter Frances Hodgkins. When John Piper showed her this lithograph of Newhaven Harbour, she studied it carefully then declared, ‘So glad he didn’t put in a seagull!’


This is an excerpt from 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist', which is available now from The Mainstone Press and good bookshops. 


I will be giving an illustrated talk based on material in the book tomorrow (Tuesday) evening in Alfriston, East Sussex. For info please contact Much Ado Books.


In April I'll be speaking at Greenside Primary School in West London and at the RWA Bristol. 


Hope to see you there!

Eric Ravilious: Illustrated Talks for 2012

Eric Ravilious, Rye Harbour, 1938

I've just proof-read 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist' for the last time, so now it's up to the printers, who I'm sure will produce a fabulous book. It's strange to think that almost four years have passed since we first started talking about 'Sussex and the Downs', which in turn grew out of the quest Tim Mainstone and I went on to find the shops depicted by Ravilious in 'High Street' (1938).

One of the things I've really enjoyed about this whole adventure is meeting people at talks, signings and exhibition launches, so I'm excited to have lots of events coming up. Mostly these are illustrated talks in which I show slides of paintings, archive photographs and my own pictures, and talk about the stories and characters associated with them. So far, the dates booked for this year go like this:

Saturday March 10th, 12-2pm: Launch and signing of 'Ravilious in Pictures: A Travelling Artist',
Royal West of England Academy, Bristol.

Saturday March 24th, time TBC: Illustrated Talk on Eric Ravilious, RWA, Bristol (contact RWA for ticket info).

Tuesday March 27th, 7pm: Celebrating Eric Ravilious, Illustrated Talk at The Old Chapel Centre, Alfriston, Sussex (contact Much Ado Books for ticket info).

Thursday June 28th, time TBC: Eric Ravilious & the White Horses of Wiltshire, Illustrated Talk at the Assembly Room, Town Hall, Devizes, Wilts (part of Devizes Festival - see website nearer the time for ticket info)

Sunday Sept 2, 3pm: Eric Ravilious: A Life in Pictures, Illustrated Talk with me AND Alan Powers at the Birley Centre, Eastbourne (ticket info nearer the time from Friends of the Towner)

Friday Sept 21st, time TBC: Two Travelling Artists - Paul Nash & Eric Ravilious, Illustrated Talk at the Rye Arts Festival (info from Rye Arts Festival nearer the time)

I don't think I've missed anything out, although it's always possible... Other events will probably be arranged as the year progresses. If you're interested in booking a talk, please get in touch via the Comments or Twitter, or contact The Mainstone Press.

Your Bookshop: Use It or Lose It

Thanks to everyone who came to Blackwells in Oxford last night for my talk on Paul Nash. I thoroughly enjoyed myself - great to see some old friends and meet new ones. It was also wonderful to be surrounded by so many books. We were in the Norrington Room, which is a Tardis-like underground space, vast and absolutely packed with books. Apparently it held the Guinness world record for longest bookshelf until some even larger shop opened somewhere in... was it South America? Perhaps someone can help narrow it down!

All those books gave the room a wonderful acoustic and even though the space is vast it felt intimate. But then a good, well-stocked bookshop does tend to feel intimate, however large it may be. Insulated by books, the browser can forget the outside world for a while and relax. Well, that's what I've always done.

Books too are intimate. On the way home to Bristol last night I sat opposite a man rather older than me, who had his nose in an old, battered copy of 'The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' by Alan Sillitoe. He was completely absorbed, not even taking his eye off the page as he nibbled at his flapjack. I once read a similarly battered copy of the same book, as have countless other people, but what really struck me about the man on the train was his absolute immersion in the world of the book - a world that opens when you first lift the cover, and to which you can return whenever you like, for the rest of your life. This chap might have read the book for the first time when he was young, perhaps when it was originally published, and was now rereading it for the tenth or fiftieth time; Sillitoe (who died last year) might have been a lifelong companion...

Blackwells at sale time...

I visit quite a number of bookshops to give talks, launch new books, etc, and I've chatted with lots of bookshop owners and managers. Many are struggling in the new world order of online retail and deep discounts. Others seem to be prospering and these tend (in my limited experience) to be the shops that muster a decent audience for a talk. These are businesses that devote enormous amounts of time and effort into winning not just customers but supporters. They run their own literary festivals or have comprehensive programmes of lectures and readings; they double as art galleries; they host book groups.

The Norrington Room - cosier in real life... and less green

They work, I think, on an important assumption. If you make your bookshop a place that is integral to people's lives, then they will stand firm against the temptation to 'buy with 1 click' and support you. It's not as if books, even at full price, are particularly expensive - how does a paperback compare with a round of drinks? Or even a couple of lattes? We go the '1 click' route out of laziness and that perennial (and very British) desire to get things cheap, irrespective of the cost in other terms. We may think of a favourite writer almost as a friend but will still choose to buy his or her new book at a colossal discount. What happens when I buy a book listed at £9.99 for £4? The writer's modest royalty, which is based on the actual price paid for a book, shrinks away almost to nothing. The publisher takes a hit too and is forced to cut costs, perhaps moving production to China (another British printer out of business), reducing staff and turning down books that won't sell sufficient numbers.

Much Ado Books, Alfriston - read this

A bookshop manager described to me recently the common phenomenon of people coming in, examining books on the shelf and then popping out to order online on their phone. These non-customers were enjoying the facilities offered by the shop - freedom to browse, attractive displays, carefully-chosen stock - and then taking their business to a cut-price rival who offered none of these things. The manager was planning to start accosting people and explaining to them that if they didn't buy books in the shop, the shop would soon be gone.

I once worked for an artist and gallery owner who would pursue customers down the street, refusing to leave them alone until they agreed to buy something. She knew that her survival depended on making sales, that no one was going to help her if she didn't, and that a certain proportion of people would give in and buy something. It's probably a good thing that bookshop people are less aggressive, but in fact the same principles apply; they either sell books or go under.

Toppings, Bath - the perfect bookshop?

Booksellers have found an array of solutions: selling rare books online; specialising in a particular subject; transforming their shop into an arts centre. Writers (and artists) can do their bit too, giving talks or encouraging people via social networks to support their local shop. But in the end what matters most is where and how we choose to buy books. We're consumers! We have freedom of choice! It may seem our God-given duty to buy everything for the lowest possible price, but it isn't.

By the way, I'm giving a talk at 6.15pm on Tues 6th December, at Foyles in Cabot Circus, Bristol. It's on Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash and you can expect lots of pictures to look at, the odd glimmer of humour and even a glass of wine. And it's FREE!