COMPTON VERNEY.- Ravilious and Co: The Pattern of Friendship brings to life the significant relationships and collaborations within one of the most widely influential - though largely unexplored - English artist designer networks of the 20th century.

In recent years Eric Ravilious has been recognised as one of the most important British artists of the 20th century. Based on new research and telling a previously untold story, Compton Verney’s exhibition focuses on Ravilious and his personal and professional relationships with luminary British artists, including Paul Nash, John Nash, Enid Marx, Barnett Freedman, Eileen ‘Tirzah’ Garwood, Edward Bawden, Thomas Hennell, Douglas Percy Bliss, Peggy Angus, Helen Binyon and Diana Low. The exhibition has been created to mark the 75th anniversary of Ravilious’ tragic death in Iceland during the Second World War.

Ravilious & Co brings together over 400 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, engravings, books, ceramics, wallpapers, textiles and other ephemera from this tight circle of friends. It highlights key moments in the artists’ lives and work, from first meetings at the Royal College of Art to the evolution of their artistic practices into commercial and industrial design during the turbulent times of the 1930s and 1940s.

Compton Verney’s show also reveals the influence that various members of the group had on Ravilious’ own, prolific career, including the role of Paul Nash in the artist’s development as the most significant wood engraver of his generation.

The exhibition also presents rarely shown, and several previously unseen, works by Ravilious, including a recently discovered painting, HMS Actaeon of 1942, produced whilst he was working as an official war artist – just before his untimely death on active service.

A new light is additionally cast on the creativity and role of the women within the network. The exhibition includes newly-discovered work by Ravilious’ precociously talented wife, the wood engraver Tirzah Garwood; illustrations by Helen Binyon, the artist’s lover and confidante; never-before-exhibited early wood engravings by the talented designer Enid Marx; and a range of fabric, textile and wallpaper designs by Diana Low and Peggy Angus, two key contributors to the ‘pattern of friendship’.

Ravilious & Co also presents an authentic representation of a 1930s bookshop, comprising nearly a hundred books, book covers and illustrations by Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman, the Nash brothers, Ravilious and those who influenced them. Eric engraved more than 400 illustrations and drew over 40 lithographic designs for books during his lifetime.

The exhibition also features a design shop designed to recall of Dunbar Hay, a London retailer founded to encourage links between artists and industry which sold works by Ravilious, Marx and others. Such artist-designers made significant contributions to commercial design from the end of the 1920s for Wedgwood, the BBC, London Transport, the GPO and many more.

The show concludes with a magnificent series of paintings produced during the war and a moving space dedicated to Ravilious’ death on 2 September 1942 off Iceland, where he was working as a war artist. He was killed at the age of 39 while accompanying a Royal Air Force reconnaissance flight, looking for a plane that had failed to return to its base the previous day. The exhibition ends with a poignant letter of condolence to Tirzah from Edward Bawden.

Works from twenty-six galleries and museums, including Tate, National Portrait Gallery, V&A, the British Museum, Imperial War Museums and over thirty private collections, will travel to Compton Verney from Eastbourne’s Towner Art Gallery – which holds the largest public collection of works by Eric Ravilious in the country.

Professor Steven Parissien, Compton Verney’s Chief Executive, says: “Ravilious was one of the most successful and popular British artists of the first half of the twentieth century. We have mugs designed by him here at Compton Verney, in our own, splendid Marx Lambert Collection; Marx was a friend and contemporary of Ravilious, and this provides an excellent context for the exhibition.”

He adds: “The show is chronologically presented and focuses on key moments when the lives, work and careers of these artists coincided, overlapped or was particularly pertinent to each other. 90 of the 400 pieces in Ravilious & Co have never been seen before, with 30% of them alone created by Eric. This really is a rich visual feast of paintings, textile and wall paper designs, book illustrations, drawings and ceramics. Together, I am sure they will do much to anchor Ravilious ’outstanding contribution in the public’s consciousness and artistic affection.”

Exhibition curated by Andy Friend and Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

Eric William Ravilious (22 July 1903 – 2 September 1942) was an English painter, designer, book illustrator and wood engraver. He studied at Eastbourne School of Art, and at the Royal College of Art, where he studied under Paul Nash. He married Eileen Lucy "Tirzah" Garwood who was also a noted artist and engraver. His early works depicted the countryside around him in the south east of England, as well as urban scenes of London. Many of his works are seen as capturing a sense of Englishness that existed between the wars. He designed a number of popular pieces for Wedgwood (1936-40) including a commemorative mug originally produced for the Coronation of Edward VIII which was adapted for that of George VI (one of the originals was given to Enid Marx, now features in the exhibition and is in the collection of Compton Verney.) Ravilious was an official war artist in World War II and received a commission as a Captain in the Royal Marines.