Eric Ravilious (1903 - 1942)

Wood engraving
16.5 x 12 cm
Signed

This print is contained within the special edition book 'The Woodcut Volume IV' (The Fleuron 1930)
Edition no. 29 of 75.

"In many ways wood-engraving was central to all his activities as a designer. Like Thomas Bewick he was a white-line engraver. On the block the design was not drawn in line or in black ink, but merely as a shaded pencil drawing that served only as a guide for the real drawing that was done by the graver in the act of cutting into the surface of the boxwood. Thus it is that Eric's engravings have a freedom, liveliness and invention that have not been equaled since the days of Bewick. He is undoubtedly one of the great original English engravers surpassed only by Thomas Bewick himself."

“He never made the slightest mistake or showed the faintest indecision. His cutting was superb. Usually he covered the block with a wash of white paint, then drew in pencil on it, often with a good deal of shading. Then with the graver he cut slowly and decisively. Eric must have had a remarkably clear mental image of what he intended to do, and he demonstrated how extraordinary this faculty was, and how fast it worked — unconsciously — when playing "heads, bodies and legs”.

Edward Bawden on Eric Ravilious in Ravilious Engravings, Jeremy Greenwood, The Wood Lea Press, Suffolk, 2008, p.7-8