In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 1903
- Died
- 1942
- Birthplace
- Acton, London
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Watercolours, illustrated books, printed designs and official wartime art
Why this life matters
His practice connected careful observation with the graphic decisions of illustration and everyday design.
Timeline
Key moments
Royal College of Art
Ravilious began scholarship study and developed enduring artistic friendships.
Marriage
He married artist and engraver Eileen Lucy Garwood.
High Street
A designed book brought his lithographs to readers.
Wartime loss
He disappeared during an official air-sea rescue observation flight.
Training across two linked practices
Eric Ravilious was born in Acton, London, in 1903 and grew up in Eastbourne. He studied at the local art school before receiving a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in 1922. There he studied wood engraving with Paul Nash and formed a lasting friendship with Edward Bawden. The connection between drawing, cutting a block and organising a printed page would remain important. His later watercolours did not emerge from a career isolated from graphic work; different media offered related opportunities for selecting, simplifying and arranging a subject.
Books, collaborators and everyday objects
Ravilious and Bawden collaborated on projects, while illustration and commissioned design supplied a substantial part of his professional life. His work reached readers through books and advertisements and users through objects such as ceramics. High Street, published in 1938 with text by J. M. Richards, brought a sequence of shops into a designed book. Ravilious had married fellow artist Eileen Lucy Garwood in 1930. These relationships place his work within a creative and commercial community, rather than treating the solitary landscape painter as his only identity.
Watercolour as a constructed view
Landscape remained a sustained interest, including the chalk figures of southern England. Train Landscape, made in 1940, joins the interior of a railway carriage with a view through its windows. Aberdeen’s museum account connects it with a planned book that was never completed. The work is a watercolour with pencil and collaged sections, not an unmediated snapshot. Its attention to upholstery and the awkwardness of a passing view show how everyday travel could become a carefully made pictorial arrangement. Design and observation meet in the same image.
Official service and an interrupted career
During the Second World War Ravilious served as an official war artist. In September 1942 he joined an air-sea rescue flight from Iceland to observe the operation; the aircraft disappeared. His death ended a career that had moved among watercolour, engraving, illustration, murals and manufactured design. The unfinished chalk-figure project is one measure of that interruption. Surviving paintings and books preserve several routes through his practice, making it possible to understand the famous landscapes alongside work made for circulation and use. The difference between a painted sheet and an image encountered on a page was part of his working world.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Eric Ravilious
- Was Ravilious only a watercolour painter?
- No. Engraving, illustration, murals, ceramics and other design work were substantial parts of his career.
- Did the chalk-figure book appear?
- Aberdeen’s account says the planned project was not completed.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Margaret Preston
Compare another artist whose printing practice connected material choices with images made for circulation.
- Paul Nash
Read the artist who taught Ravilious wood engraving and developed a different relation to landscape.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
- 1. UK Government Art CollectionEric Ravilious
- 2. Aberdeen City Council, Archives Gallery and MuseumsThe nation’s favourite railway painting
- 3. Dulwich Picture GalleryRavilious: Large Print Guide
The substantive indexed catalogue entry was inspected. The direct PDF returned 404, so no full catalogue or image examination is claimed.
- 4. Liss Llewellyn, artist catalogueEric Ravilious