Eric Ravilious, an evening with Ella Ravilious
A talk by Ella Ravilious
Friday 14th February 2025 at 7.30pm
Quaker Meeting House, High Street, Saffron Walden, CB10 1AA
Tickets £6.00 via this link, or on the door
Eric Ravilious was a designer, painter, printmaker, and illustrator best known for his war work and depictions of the English landscape, particularly the South Downs in Sussex. Often described as a particularly “English” artist, key to his style was an ability to convey in watercolour the nuances of the British climate.
This talk will showcase Ravilious’s deep enjoyment of everything in nature, from, such as weather, plants, animals, and birds, as well as Ravilious’s love of depicting signs of human presence in the landscape, including rusting machinery, ships and aircraft, and his famous illustrations of hillside chalk figures.
Ella will also uncover Eric Ravilious’s relationship with the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and her own role there as a curator.
Biography:
Ella Ravilious is Curator: Architecture and Design in the Art, Architecture, Photography and
Design Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She is also studying for a
PhD in the history of the V&A’s Photography Collection at the Photographic History
Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester. With Professor Elizabeth Edwards she
co-edited the volume What Photographs Do: The Making and Remaking of Museum Cultures , published by UCL Press in November 2022. Her latest book about her grandfather’s artistic career, Eric Ravilious: Landscapes and Nature , was published by Thames and Hudson/V&A in 2023.