The Cottage Orné Quilt

The Cottage Orné Quilt
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Friday 6 May 2011

No more Royal Wedding - now Eric and Tizah Ravilious!

It seems that having "Royal Wedding" in the title of a blog post certainly brings in more readers!   I can't keep doing that however tempting, so it's time to move on!

As my enthusiasm for quilting is still zilch and the Royal Wedding quilt is languishing in my pending basket, I' m having to enthuse over other favourite things.  One of them being the work of Eric Ravilious, who as an official War Artist, was lost on a mission over Iceland in 1942.




This now means that everything he did, and he was extremely versatile, is extremely collectible and so, very expensive.

Naturally because I love jugs and mugs,  I  particularly like the very distinctive commemoratives he designed for Wedgewood.  This Gardening jug is now mega bucks, if you can find one -

 

He married one of his students, Tizah Garwood, and last Sunday her niece brought two of her pictures to the Antiques Road Show at Winchester Cathedral.

I love naive pictures and I was totally charmed with this one -


Tizah was well known, in her own right as a wood engraver, but of course her reputation was and is  considerably overshadowed by Eric's fame.  Later in her life she did oil painting, a medium that Eric never mastered and she certainly seems to have developed a very different style to her wood engravings.

Paul Atterbury, the Road Show expert, was, I thought, rather condescending about her paintings.  He liked them, particularly the one I have shown above and valued it at £5,000,  rather than a couple of hundred pounds for this one -


This seemed to be mainly because it chimed with the subject matter of some of  her husband's work, as he had done a series of railway images.  It certainly was the most colourful but I like the other too.  Very unfair I think!  This picture doesn't really do it justice as it was extremely detailed and almost three dimensional.

In the meantime, her grandson, Ben Travilious, has put out an appeal for information on the whereabouts of many of her paintings, there are quite a few of them on the list.  Do take a look - you never know, you might have one in the attic!   http://www.ericravilious.co.uk/




3 comments:

Julia said...

well even if your quilting mojo has temporarily disappeared, you still managed to get a quilt into this post in the second painting!!

I love all of these paintings, particularly 'Weatherfield Shop'.

Julia

Quilt Station said...

Hi Mary,
weddings, paintings, jugs/mugs or quilts...it doesn't matter, all your blog posts are interesting and a fun read.
Living in a Railway Station, I love the train painting and the quilt in the second pic is worthy of a wee sketch to file away for future reference.
Cheers Margaret

Sarah said...

I love Eric Ravilious`s work and I was fascinated to see the two paintings of Tizah`s on the Antiques Roadshow. I agree with you about Paul Atterbury, I feel because the paintings looked like they had been done as llustrations for childrens books, he was a bit dismissive of them.

I havn't quilted much either, maybe it`s the hot weather, quilting under a huge heap of top, back and wool wadding does seem to be easier in the cold dark winter nights!