A trove of original wood blocks hand-carved by the painter and printmaker Eric Ravilious and his artist wife Tirzah Garwood has been rescued from eBay thanks to an alliance between the artists’ heirs and the Art Loss Register (ALR).
The collection of 27 blocks, made between 1930-1950, first appeared on the online marketplace last summer, sparking a rush of interest from Ravilious watchers including the pair’s daughter and granddaughter, Anne Ullman and the curator Ella Ravilious, author of Ravilious: Landscapes and Nature.
Ella Ravilious told The Art Newspaper that the family had scrambled to secure the works, which had been believed to have been missing or stolen since they were last seen in the 1950s.
Eric Ravilious, Sussex Landscape
Photo: Cameron Brown
“We think they may have been lent to a publisher who never returned them and then possibly ended up in a charity shop which had no idea of their value,” she says.
Once alerted to the eBay listing, the family contacted the Art Loss Register (ALR) to add the blocks to its database.
The popularity and prices of works by Ravilious, who was the first British artist to die in active service during the Second World War, have been rising in recent years, while Garwood was the subject of a recent solo show at Dulwich Picture Gallery.
ALR’s Antonia Kimbell who worked on the recovery, tells The Art Newspaper that having a listing on the database meant the sale could be halted and “is a very effective method of getting the seller to come to the table“.
Now catalogued, the blocks have been entrusted to the two galleries best known for their holdings of Ravilious and Garwood—The Fry Art Gallery in Suffolk and Towner Eastbourne, in the coastal town where Ravilious attended art school.
The Fry, which closes for the winter on 26 October, has 13, ranging in size from a few inches to approximately 30cm. These will, according to Fry chair David Oelman, go on display when the gallery reopens next April.
Eric Ravilious, Weekly Intelligence Report Illustrations
Photo: Cameron Brown
The rest of the collection is now available to view alongside The Towner’s substantial Ravilious archive. The institution has also just opened a new space dedicated to the artist.
Karen Taylor, The Towner’s collections and exhibitions curator, told The Art Newspaper that the gallery commissioned new cases for the blocks which can be seen with some of Ravilious’ engraving tools. The Fry benefitted from the £67,000 purchase supported by the Art Fund and Arts Council England.
Asked about how it feels to get up close to the woodblocks, which are made from smoothed, hard box wood, Taylor says: “Knowing you are holding something that Eric Ravilious or Tirzar Garwood spent hours working on is such a privilege. They are the missing pieces that reveal the making of so many prints held in our collection.”
