Eric Ravilious is one of the best-known twentieth-century English artists. For many, his watercolors capture the spirit of midcentury England. But while he had a style of his own, he did not work in isolation; he worked within a network of artists that included fellow students at the Royal College of Art such as Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, Enid Marx, Percy Horton, Peggy Angus, and Helen Binyon.
The story of this beloved artist is also a biography of the group of fellow creators with whom he associated?men and women who inspired, challenged, and influenced one another?from their student days up through the Second World War. Drawing on extensive research, Andy Friend considers the predecessors in the English watercolor and wood-engraving tradition that influenced the group’s art and demonstrates the significance of women artists, whose place within this interwar-era network has often been neglected.
Published to coincide with the seventy-fifth anniversary of Ravilious’s death, Ravilious & Co. accompanies an exhibition of the same name, touring throughout England in 2017.
215 illustrations, 145 in colour.
Industry Reviews
'Adds much new detail and factual fine-tuning to our picture of national, in contrast to international, modern art in interwar Britain' - Daily Telegraph
'Friend excels ... in the glimpses he offers of the lives behind the art' - The Times
'A moving book' - Literary Review
'A lovingly researched and crafted portrait of intricately connected creative lives... New voices emerge from the archives, unfamiliar images light up the pages. Here, above all, is the joyous making of art' - Alexandra Harris, author of Weatherland
'Beautifully illustrated' - The Times
'Gorgeously illustrated' - The Lady
'Beautifully written' - Sussex Life
'The book is magnificent. I can't recommend it enough ... Andy Friend seems to have opened new vistas on the lives, loves and connections of this mesmerising and migrant artist - right up to his last fatal flight off Iceland in 1942' - Robert Macfarlane
'Valuable and absorbing' - Yorkshire Post
'A deft example of that tricky genre, the group biography' - Martin Gayford, the Spectator
'One of the best biographies this year ... a lovely account' - Guardian
'Shrewdly and sympathetically charts the wide-ranging influence of this group and their personal and professional relationships' - Sunday Times
'Generously illustrated, beautifully written ... a remarkable testimony to the making of art and friendship' - The Artist
'A fascinating slice of English artistic and social history' - New York Review of Books
'Engagingly written ... beautifully produced' - Art Newspaper