The process of a picture is always interesting to me. I like seeing how a drawing is made, abstracted and translated into other mediums. Here are three versions of the same view of Thameside by John Minton. After the Second World War Minton took on a series of paintings of London’s Riverside and Docklands in rather bold contrast to some of his muted war works.
John Minton – The Barge, 1946
John Minton –‘Rotherhithe from Wapping’, 1946
John Minton – Thameside, 1948
One of the most famous follies in Britain was in Gillingham. It was a folly for it was never completed, it was to be the Jezreel Temple of the Flying Roll. It was built by a religious sect, led by an ex-Indian army corporal
James Roland White, later known as James Jershom Jezreel. It was painted by Tristram Hillier for one of the Shell Posters.
Tristram Hillier – Jezreel’s Temple Shell Poster, 1936
The printed word in books, pamphlets, newspapers and the postal service may have helped the social situation that made for a boom in new religious orders at the time. In America there were the Mormans but in Britain there was also a wide range of strange religions and cults based on Christ, the power of the pyramids or séance and speaking with the dead, but mostly cranks seeking power. It happens that I collect the books of such people (especially on the pyramids), as a comedic and weird area of my library.
James White enlisted in the British Army on 27 July 1875 joining the 16th Regiment of Foot as a private, based in Chatham, Kent. It was at this time that White was also becoming interested in other spiritualists who had become famous. One was Joanna Southcott, a domestic servant who aged 42 in 1792 believed she had supernatural powers. Southcott wrote and
dictated prophecies in rhyme, announced herself as the Woman of the
Apocalypse spoken of in the Book of Revelations.
John Wroe was another inspiration. Wroe had set up the Christian Israelite Church at Chatham in 1875. The church was originally set up in Gravesend, Kent, ten miles from Gillingham.
White, while in Secunderabad, India, with his regiment complied a book made up from the writings of Johanna Southcott and John Wroe. To this compilation he gave the title of “The Flying Roll.” It is emblematically sculptured on the western tablet on the south front of the tower building as it remains today. The Flying Roll was described as a “ramshackle” book, made up of extracts “ransacked from the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations” together with references to Southcott and Wroe.
White joined a small branch of a Southcottian sect of Christian Israelites at Chatham, led by a Mr and Mrs Head and calling itself the New House of Israel. Shortly after joining he wrote a version of the manuscript to become known as the “Flying Roll” and took over the church. White adopted the name of James Jershom Jezreel and persuaded some worshippers that he was the Messenger of the Lord. White also went to Wrenthorpe, in Yorkshire, taking his “Flying Roll” with him. Here dwelt a community that had long followed John Wroe and Johanna Southcott. To these he made a fervid appeal claiming himself to be “a messenger sent by God to succeed their former prophet.” They promptly rejected both him and “Flying Roll.” He then returned to Chatham. As the “Flying Roll” had so signally failed him in both of these early appeals James decided to keep it back for later and happier days.
White completed his military service in 1881 and left the army to set about building a headquarters for his church. Leaving the army he changed his name from White and went on to be called Jezreel.
The site for his church was at the top of Chatham Hill and the highest point in the area. It was chosen, Jezreel said, after a revelation from God.
He envisaged a building based on Revelation xxi, 16: “And the city lieth foursquare, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth … the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal.” It was intended to be a
sanctuary, assembly hall and headquarters of the New and Latter House
of Israel, as the church was now called.
Around the perimeter there would be shops plus accommodation for Israel’s International College, a school he had already set up at his home in Woodlands Road, Gillingham.
Jezreel wanted the new HQ to be a perfect cube, each side 144 ft long. The architects, however, persuaded him the design was impractical and he agreed a modified version – 124 ft on each side and 120 ft high at each corner. It was to be built of steel and concrete with yellow brick walls and eight castellated towers. The trumpet and flying roll, crossed swords of the spirit and the Prince of Wales feathers (signifying the Trinity), were to be engraved on the outer walls.
First, an enormous cellar had to be constructed for storage, lift machinery, a heating system and the all-important printing presses to turn out thousands of copies of the Flying Roll and other literature essential to the
sect.
The circular assembly room was a vast amphitheatre, said to be capable of accommodating up to 5,000 people. In the roof would be a glass dome, 94 ft in diameter. Jezreel planned gardens and stately avenues from adjoining streets, making it a focal point for the area. The estimate for these plans was £25,000 and completion was set for 1 January 1885. The money came from his followers savings and fundraising.
Jezreel insisted his followers were abstainers from drink – a rule that did not apply to the leader, who often appeared to be drunk.
Jezreel fell ill towards the end of 1884 and died on 2 March 1885. Nobody mourned his death, for the word was without meaning in the sect, who expected his speedy resurrection. His coffin bore the simple inscription James Jershom Jezreel, aged 45 years, and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Grange Road cemetery near his home in Gillingham.
The sect was taken over by his wife Clarissa (née Rogers), a follower 10 years his junior whom he had married on 17 December 1881. (On the marriage certificate she added the name Esther by which she was then known.) She ensured the building work continued. The foundation stone was laid on 19 September 1885.
Digital version of White’s original design.
Much of the tower’s foundations were in place by early 1886 and some of the peripheral buildings were occupied. As building costs soared, Clarissa made economies in the budget for keeping followers. She found the cost of feeding Jezreelites was particularly high and declared the sect would become vegetarian, living off a diet of bread and potatoes.
“Queen Esther” (the derogatory name by which she was called in the press), however, was often to be seen in the area riding in a coach and dressed in fashionable clothing. Inevitably, this led to dissent and the number of followers – at one point as high as 1,400 – began to dwindle. After a legal case involving one of the followers, who had given all his money to the cause, a mere 160 Jezreelites remained.
By June 1887, the whole of the outside except for the roof was finished, while inside the ground floor was complete with the newly installed steam printing-presses rapidly turning out the sect’s publications – the ‘Flying Roll’ and ‘Messenger of Wisdom’. On the floor above, large quantities of steel girders had been installed to construct the meeting hall, balconies, the hydraulic choirs and preacher’s revolving platform.
However, payments to the builders began to slow down. In November 1887, the building was ready for its concrete and asphalt roof but this had to be delayed, and as the money finally ran out in March 1888, work ceased. So, roofless and surrounded by scaffolding, Jezreel’s fantastic tower lay exposed to the elements. By that time, £30,000 had been spent and it was estimated that another £20,000 would be needed. There was a possibility that the building could have been finished, but the sudden death of Esther in June 1888 removed the Jezreelites’ unifying influence and almost certainly ensured that this would not happen.
In July, 1888, Mrs Jezreel died suddenly from peritonitis. She was 28. The sect fragmented and work on the tower was suspended forever. It was demolished in 1961. The shops (and members accommodation) mentioned near the site of the tower and demolished in 2008.
Warwick Hutton – Interior of Noah’s Ark, 1977
The work of Warwick Hutton is a bit of a rarity in the UK sadly. In Cambridge (where I live) he is known as a teacher as he was head of Fine Art at the Cambridge School of Art. Across the UK he is known as a painter and wood engraver and internationally he is remembered as an illustrator.
Hutton was born in England to an artistic family originally from New Zealand. His father was the glass engraver John Hutton (famous for the windows at Coventry) and his mother was Helen (Nell) nee Blair a talented painter. In 1939 the couple had twins, Macaillan (Cailey) John Hutton and Warwick (Wocky) Blair Hutton.
Warwick attended the Colchester School of Art where John O’Connor was the Principle and John Nash was teaching Botanical drawing. Richard Chopping was also teaching there. There Hutton met Elizabeth Mills and they were married in 1965.
Warwick Hutton – Two illustrations from Cats Free and Familiar, 1975
Warwick was working as an illustrator while helping his father engrave and install the windows for Coventry Cathedral. He worked for small private presses and major publishers, from the The Keepsake Press (Throwaway Lines, Cats Free and Familiar, Rider And Horse.) to the Cambridge University Press and their limited edition Christmas Book series (Waterways of the Fens, A Printer’s Christmas Books).
One of Hutton’s illustrations appeared in John O’Connors book The Technique Of Wood Engraving. Three years later Warwick published his own book Making Woodcuts with Academy Editions Ltd.
The major successes for Warwick Hutton were to come with a series of retelling of Bible Stories (Noah and the Great Flood, Jonah and the Great Fish, Moses in the Bulrushes) and Grimm’s Tales (Beauty and the Beast, The Nose Tree, The Tinderbox, The Sleeping Beauty) all of these internationally published.
ウォリックハットン – ねむりひめ, 1979
My two favourites are the Adam and Eve story for it not being shy about nakedness in children’s books and Sleeping Beauty for the wonderful use of the rose thorns and the patterns used throughout the book.
Warwick Hutton – Illustration from The Sleeping Beauty, 1986
The most attention came for Hutton when he worked with Susan Cooper, the author best known for The Dark Is Rising series. Hutton illustrated three books for Cooper: The Selkie Girl, Tam Lin and the Silver Cow for her, many of these are still in American libraries.
The later series of books by Hutton were re-telling of Greek Myths, Odysseus and the Cyclops, Persephone, Perseus, Theseus And The Minotaur the latter gaining much attention as mentioned in the New York Times Children’s Book Award review below:
The gifted British watercolorist turns to Greek myth and captures the bravery of young Theseus, the terrifying half-human Minotaur and the haunting beauty of ancient Crete. Here, as in all his other books, the ocean scenes have astonishing intensity and power. †
Hutton collaborated with other authors illustrating their books: Margaret & Raymond Chang on The Cricket Warrior: A Chinese Tale and James Sage on To Sleep.
Warwick Hutton – Illustration from The Cricket Warrior, 1994
Becoming Head of the Foundation course at the Cambridge School of Art Hutton was able to encourage the students to publish their works and set up and edited
Private View: The Journal from the Cambridge School of Art. The magazine republished works by famous artists as well as the students own work.
As a teacher at the Cambridge School of Art, Warwick provided the Council with a painting as part of the Original Works for Children in Cambridgeshire, part of the Pictures for Schools series. The Pictures for Schools project came out of, and alongside many other famous ‘utopian’ projects like Contemporary Lithographs (1937-38), AIA Everyman’s Prints (1940) and the School Prints series of lithographs where major artists would be paid to design a lithograph that would be printed in thousands and then sold to schools cheaply.
In the founding of the Pictures for Schools project Nan Youngman wanted to have paintings more than prints from artists. Early contributors were L. S. Lowry, Tirzah Garwood, Stephen Bone and Bernard Cheese. After some decades it was taken over by Walter Hoyle who was the head of Printmaking at the Cambridge School of Art. Together they encouraged their student’s to donate works to the collection to be hung in schools.
Hutton’s painting of ‘Adam and Eve’ followed with a book he published in 1987 under the same name by Hutton with Atheneum Books.
Warwick Hutton – Adam and Eve, 1986 (In My Collection)
Hutton died of cancer in 1994 in Cambridge, England. An audiobook of Jonah and the Great Fish is for sale in the USA as an audiobook and a video can be found here. Interior of Noah’s Ark can be purchased as a card from Orwell Press Art Publishing.
Private View: The Journal from the Cambridge School of Art.
Bibliography
Throwaway Lines
by Gavin Ewart, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1964Waterways of the Fens
by Peter Eden, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1972Making Woodcuts
by Warwick Hutton, 1974Practical Gemstone Craft
by Helen Hutton. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1974.Cats Free and Familiar
by Robert Leach, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1975Rider and Horse
by Martin Booth, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1976Noah and the Great Flood
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1977Mosaic Making Techniques
by Helen Hutton, 1977The Sleeping Beauty
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1979The Nose Tree
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1981Private View – Cambridge School of Art Magazine
Editor and co-editor, 1982-1989The Silver Cow: A Welsh Tale
by Susan Cooper. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1983Flesh of His Flesh – Poems
by Florence Elon, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1984Beauty and the Beast
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1985Jonah and the Great Fish
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986Moses in the Bulrushes
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986The Selkie Girl
by Susan Cooper. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1986Adam and Eve – The Bible Story
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton. 1987The Tinderbox
by Hans Christian Andersen and re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1988Theseus And The Minotaur
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1989To Sleep
by James Sage. Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1990Tam Lin
by Susan Cooper, Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1991The Cricket Warrior – A Chinese Tale
retold by Margaret & Reymond Chang, Illustrated by Warwick HuttonPerseus
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1993Persephone
re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1994Odysseus and the Cyclops
by Homer and re-told and Illustrated by Warwick Hutton, 1995.
† Published: New York Times. November 5, 1989
Warwick Hutton – Jonah and the Great Fish
A retelling of the Bible story and part of a series of stories published by Hutton on the Bible for release in America, the UK. It was also translated into French and German. It won the 1984 Boston Globe Horn Book Award for Picture Books and was nominated for the 1984 New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book. These videos were produced for the American Librarys to show and as teaching aids. They were also broadcast on USA Public TV. Not Animations but Icongraphic (the illustrations with a narrator and panning).
I thought this was an interesting bit of Great Bardfield history, of what could have been. Below is a letter from Edward Bawden to the typographer and book designer John Lewis and what’s interesting is Bawden is suggesting a house for him to live in.
There are two options, one is for them to have a long term rental of Town House in Great Bardfield (around four houses from Brick House) and then a beautiful house called Arundels in Bardfield Saling.
Arundels, Bardfield Saling.
What is rather lovely is Bawden has drawn out a map in the letter and is honest about how much work it will need to repair it.
The curious thing about his letter is that it comes at a time when Edward was encouraging people like Walter Hoyle and other Royal College of Art staff to move to Great Bardfield. It is letters like this that show how Bawden was trying to cement an artistic community in Essex. In the end Lewis moved to Meadow Cottage, Great Bealings, Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, to be near W S Cowell Ltd, Ipswich, where he was a printer.
Edward Bawden – Letter to John Lewis, c1947.
The print and the studies used in this post are by John Aldridge for the Festival of Britain, 1951 lithographs distributed by the Artists’ International Association and Lyons Tea-houses. The series featured prints from Edwin La Dell, Keith Vaughan and Sheila Robinson. The artists all chose different views and ideas but Aldridge used views of Great Bardfield.
John Aldridge – Studies for the Great Bardfield Print, 1950
The process of the print is rather interesting, I like the study doodles for the print made out by Aldridge using different colourways and grids. Below is the final gouache he would have sent off to the prints to transcribe into a lithograph (note it is backwards). It looks like he was using a bit of the wax resist effect that Bawden was so keen on.
John Aldridge – Study for the Great Bardfield Print, 1950
The final print I think is a bit of a disappointment, the texture to the edges of the print have been lost and it’s a very scrappy looking thing with cut and pencil makings that have made it into the lithography. The yellow slashed edging would have been black ink that has been made into a negative with the photo-lithographic technique, it only works for the text areas. The painting above has more vigour – the lack of colour used means the absence of red, the buildings look faded and without blue the sky is apocalyptic like a John Martin painting.
John Aldridge – Great Bardfield, 1951
Using the painting as a guide I am showing how the village looks now compared to John Aldridge’s paintings in 1950 using Google street view.
John Aldridge – Pant Place, 1950
Named after the river Pant in Bardfield, the house today has had its door moved and replaced with a rosebush. The railings have also been lost as has the stylised garden for something simpler to deal with. There is a driveway now as the motorcar rules the roads today.
Pant Plant, Great Bardfield today.
John Aldridge – Crown Street, 1950
Crown Street has only changed with the prevalence of the dreadful curse of the UK, the UPVC Window. The shop has gone and now is a house front.
Crown Street today.
John Aldridge – Brook Street, 1950
Brook Street today too is so similar it might not look to have changed to a time traveller. The railings around the island in the centre of the village and War memorial have gone, maybe they should come back.
The house to the left of the picture is Buck House, home to Stanley Clifford-Smith, one of the most unusual Great Bardfield artists. Thanks to a Fry Art Gallery booklet by Olive Cook he was written out of Great Bardfield history and was considered less important than he was. It was a myth started in 1988 and perpetuated until quite recently with the writing of Under Moon Light by his son Silas Clifford Smith highlighting his role in the Great Bardfield exhibitions in Bardfield’s 1950s.
Brook Street today.
John Aldridge – Northampton House, 1950
The Gardens of Northampton House have been sold off to make an estate called ‘Northampton Meadow’ though it looked to be a rather lovely garden it makes me wonder – in an age without the television and with less transport were gardens the main entertainment and way to show off to your neighbours?
Northampton Meadow today, a 1990s estate.
This by Henry Holzer looked familiar. I found that it was the original painting to a print he made. The print is reversed due to the nature of printmaking, so when he was drawing the image to the plate, he was making an abstracted copy of the print.
Henry Holzer – Nr Eisey Bridge, River Thames, Cricklade, Wiltshire, 1954
The difference between the two I find is remarkable. Holzer was a war artist and would paint with such detail. The painting I have above has all the hallmarks of quality and the water has a lovely motion to it. The trees are fluffy and fully formed, what I admired is how he translated it into abstract forms for the print, it’s not an easy task to do with so few colours.
Henry Holzer – River at Evening, 1958 (Lithograph)
Born in Tottenham, London. His Viennese born father was a lithographer. Henry studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts before taking up at teaching post at Hornsey College of Art. During the Second World War he was posted to India and towards the end of the war produced camouflage work. He was Head of Printmaking at Hornsey until he retired in 1968. In later life he moved with his family to Norfolk. He was registered blind in 1993 but continued to paint and draw. †
War service saw a posting to peaceful northern India, where he spent most of his time painting the spectacular scenery. He ended the war as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery producing camouflage work and, in the weeks after VE Day, lithographs of anti-doodlebug defences on the Suffolk coast while stationed at Walberswick. ‡
Below is another example of an oil painting and then a lithograph from 1958, but this time the lithograph would have been drawn backwards so it looks like the painting and not a mirror image.
Henry Holzer – Sun over Willows, 1948 (Oil)
Henry Holzer – Sun on the River, 1958 (Lithograph)
† Henry Holzer – Southwark Heritage Guide
‡ Ian Collins – Henry Holzer Obituary
Edward Bawden went on a working holiday to Iron Bridge with the War Artists John Aldridge and Carel Weight. John Nash went with them, but I couldn’t find any records until the artist Celia Hart found some for me! Here I have collected some of the pictures all of them made from that trip and likely finished off in their studios at home. Although the John Nash works don’t have dates I am confident they are from the same trip.
I was at Ironbridge for about six weeks in September and October 1956 and was joined by John Aldridge, John Nash and Carel Weight. Each of us in turn painted the famous bridge’. ‘Houses at Ironbridge was almost the last painting I was able to do during my stay’. ‡
John Nash – Ironbridge through the Bridge, Gridded study.
John Nash – Ironbridge, (Exhibited in 1960)
The Iron Bridge is very handsome but a teaser to draw with three upright supports and five curved spans to every three so that a sideways view is very complicated…. We dodge between the showers and somehow I’ve done three drawings and a bit – but Carel has done an oil painting every day it seems while Edward keeps his work secretly in his rooms and does not divulge progress. Carel and I play bar billards every night, but Bawden will not join these simple diversions. ‡
John Nash – Ironbridge, Shropshire.
Edward Bawden – Ironbridge Church, 1956
Edward Bawden – The House at Ironbridge, 1956
Edward Bawden – Iron Bridge, 1956
Edward Bawden. Houses at Ironbridge, 1956
The Bawden paintings above all share the same palette leading me to think he painted them on location and touched them up later. The wall of Houses at Ironbridge is a layering of paint and grease to make a watercolour batik over the drawing of the wall.
The paintings of John Aldridge show a quickly sketched oil painting that I would say was done on location and then an Italian looking Ironbridge in a brighter series of colours and much more control that I suspect would have been finished off in Great Bardfield.
John Aldridge – Ironbridge, 1956
John Aldridge – Ironbridge III, 1956
John Aldridge – Garden in Ironbridge, 1956
Carel Weight – Ironbridge, 1957
‡ Tate – T00206
‡ Letter from John Nash to John Lewis
Eric Ravilious – Brighton Queen at Night, 1935
The problem with book publishing is the rights to images and the expense of paying various people for them, thankfully the internet has a different code of conduct so when I make these posts, I can use pictures that have been lost, even from the world of Pintrest. I try hard to find as many relevant images as I can per topic. I say because someone suggested it was an easy blog to write, but the art of it is the research of quotes and images and though a topic ploughed before this post took a while to compile.
There is a lot on Eric Ravilious in Newhaven in print but very little on Edward Bawden and his feelings of the town other than a few letters back and forth. I start with how both Edward and Eric came to be in Newhaven. But the dates of the Bawden pictures are all over the place as he made visits to Newhaven alone apparently without Eric.
Edward Bawden – Ferryboat Entering Newhaven Harbour, 1935
Ravilious grew up in Sussex, in Eastbourne, where his parents had an antiques shop, studying first at the Eastbourne School of Art (1919-22) and then the Royal College of Art (1922-25), where he met his life-long friend Edward Bawden. ‡
At this time in Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious lives they were living and painting together with their wives in Brick House, Great Bardfield, they were using the local area of Essex as a source of work but they both wanted some variety. In the summer of 1935 the pair went out to scout painting locations for trips. Harwich was location that didn’t delight.
Earlier in the summer Edward had suggested going to draw at Harwich with Eric, but when they went to look round it, they didn’t like it enough, and planned instead to go again to Newhaven, and stay at the Hope Inn. They would go at the beginning of August, after they had put up the end of year students’ exhibition in the design room at the college.†
His (Eric) childhood association with Sussex was reignited by an invitation in 1934 from the artist and polymath Peggy Angus to stay in her shepherd’s hut, Furlongs, on the South Downs. ‡
From Furlongs Ravilious could easily meet up with Bawden for their trip to Newhaven as Ravilious was spending a lot of time at Furlongs painting watercolours for an exhibition later that year.
Newhaven was distinguished by a distinctive breakwater and seawall with lighthouses perched at each end. Ravilious’s predilection for the nautical was shared by many of his contemporaries. ‡
The Hope Inn, Newhaven, 1935
As in a previous post, I mentioned that for Ravilious, Sussex was convenient as a location, as he was lodging in two old caravans at Furlongs. For Bawden it would have been less convenient, it’s likely he came direct from Essex and met Ravilious in Newhaven. They lodged at the Hope Inn, a pub on the side of the cliffs and with a sea view on the edge of the town.
While Eric set to work painting ‘close up shots’ of boats and the edges of piers, Bawden’s work looked more widescreen and panoramic. The works Bawden were painting was rather playful and modern, a range of odd perspectives seamed to challenge him, the boat at a strange angle, looking down a hillside and the litter of boats and yardware made for a really interesting series of works.
Edward Bawden – September Noon Newhaven, 1935
From Furlongs, Ravilious made trips to paint at Newhaven, spending a slightly gruelling August and September at the Hope Inn with Bawden in September 1935. Bawden painted a stormy sea breaking over harbour moles, but Ravilious preferred the Victorian paddle steamers and dredgers with fine names like ‘Brighton Queen’, ‘The James’ and ‘The Foremost Prince’ which worked from Brighton Pier in the summer and were laid up at Newhaven out of season. ♥
A montage of Edward Bawden’s picture and below a ‘lost’ Eric Ravilious painting of Newhaven, Dredgers, 1935.
Edward Bawden – September: 8:30pm (Newhaven), 1935
Directly Eric got to Newhaven, a terrific storm blew up, the worst for years. He walked to the end of the jetty to look at the lighthouse: ‘The spray from the breakers crashing on the weather-side of the breakwater was a quite extraordinary sight – I got very wet and think now it was almost a dangerous walk out there, but worth it. †
Edward Bawden – September: 11am, 1937
Edward Bawden – September: Noon 1937
Edward Bawden – Newhaven No. 2, 1935
Eric Ravilious – Channel Steamer Leaving, 1935
Below are a few views form old photographs and postcards of Newhaven around the same time and showing the things Eric painted below.
Photograph of Newhaven Harbour, c1930.
Postcard of Newhaven Harbour, c1900.
Photograph of the Signal Station and Lighthouse on Newhaven Pier, c1960
These photographs above have various views around the watercolour, lithograph and woodcut below. It would show Ravilious again using and cycling the same subject matter for various commissions.
Eric Ravilious – Newhaven Harbour, 1935
The painting above was bought from the Zwemmer Gallery by Beryl Sinclair, nee Bowker. She studied with Edward and Eric at the Royal College of Art. She was known as Bowk. Ravilious painted her twice that we know, once into the Colwyn Bay Pier Murals by Ravilious in the kitchen with a plant and then again in one of the ‘lost’ Ravilious oil painting – ‘Bowk at the sink’, 1929-30.
Newhaven Harbour is everything you would want from a 1930s watercolour. The buildings look like Oliver Hall modernist houses in white with cubes and curves but in fact is Victorian. The lighthouse was built in 1885 and pulled down in 1976. It looks like a stage set design. The rigging and black circles where part of a semaphore signal that shows when the tide is in and out to boats wanting to enter or leave the harbour.
Eric Ravilious – Newhaven Harbour (detail), 1935
When asked to produce a print for Contemporary Lithographs, Ravilious made what he called a Homage to Seurat, a print made of a spongy sky and the typical halftone lines of colour over layered.
Eric Ravilious – Newhaven Harbour, 1937 – Contemporary Lithographs.
When approached to illustrate the Country Life Cookery Book in the same year of the Lithograph above, Ravilious took the details of his previous works and added seafood and a basket of fish emblazoned with the name of the town.
Eric Ravilious – February, Wood-engraving for the Country Life Cookery Book, 1937
Edward Bawden – September: 7PM, 1937
Staying at The Hope Inn in 1935 must have been a bit dull. But the next year the building would be pulled down and in it’s place a totally modernist building put up.
Eric Neve K.C., on behalf of the Ports-all United Breweries, made an application for the approval plans of proposed alterations to the Hope Inn, Newhaven. He said this was a desire to improve the accommodation of the existing house. ♣
In a letter to Eric, Edward writes:
Meals and service have brightened; gone are those soft, stale oyster-eyed eggs and there is is less water and more gravy with the meat. ♦
Below is a picture of the then, new Hope Inn. White and modernist. At the time Newhaven was a popular way of crossing the channel to France.
The Hope Inn, Newhaven, 1936
During the Second World War Ravilious became a War Artist and he found himself in Newhaven again to sketch and paint the coastal defences.
Eric Ravilious – Coastal Defences, 1940
Eric Ravilious – Coastal Defences, Harbour Breakwater, 1940
Eric Ravilious – Coastal Defences, Convoy Leaving Harbour, 1940
† Helen Binyon – Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist, 1983
‡ Sothebys – Eric Ravilious
♥ Alan Powers – Eric Ravilious: Imagined Realities, 2012
♣ Sussex Agricultural Express – Friday 07 February 1936
♦ Letter from Edward Bawden to Eric Ravilious, 1936
Aesop’s Fables has been a favourite with British illustrators ever since the mass publication of the edition in 1818 with woodcuts by Thomas Bewick. Bewick had first published a Selection of Fables in Three Parts in 1784. But these tales of ancient Greece have such humour and moral tales that they where a kind alternative to the bible for children.
Edward Bawden was a great reader and had an impressive library that he partly sold in grief in 1970 following the double whammy of the death of his wife and down-sizing home from Brick House in Great Bardfield to 2 Park Lane, Saffron Walden. He spent the next 10 years trying to acquire his favourite books back.
Bawden is called a celebrator of English humour and having grown up reading Edward Lear it might be why he thought the fables were a good subject matter, it is hard to say. He made one lino-print for the 1956 book ‘A handbook of type and design’ by John Lewis and maybe it had more mileage.
Edward Bawden – An Old Crab and a Young Crab, 1956
Edward Bawden – Hare and Tortoise, 1970
Edward Bawden – A Frog and an Ox, 1970
Edward Bawden – Daw in Borrowed Feathers, 1970
Edward Bawden – Peacock and Magpie, 1970
Edward Bawden – Frog, Mouse and Kite, 1970
Edward Bawden – Hares, Foxes and Eagles, 1970
Edward Bawden – Ant and Grasshopper, 1970
Edward Bawden – The Gnat and the Lion, 1970