Exclusive Members' Event – Spotlight on Eric Ravilious

As a watercolourist, muralist, ceramicist, wood-engraver, book illustrator, furniture designer and official war artist, Eric Ravilious (1903-1942) was one of the most prolific and distinctive young British artists working between the two World Wars. He is also an artist who continues to win ever-increasing popularity, as recent exhibitions and sales of his work have shown.

The Ashmolean Museum’s collection holds several examples of Ravilious's watercolours, prints and ceramics. At this ‘spotlight’ talk, Dr Haycock will explore some of these, whilst looking at the whole range of the artist's brilliant, but sadly brief career.

Ravilious served as a war artist, and was the first British war artist to die on active service in World War 2 when the aircraft he was in was lost off Iceland.

David Boyd Haycock is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University. A freelance lecturer and curator, he is the author of a number of books, including A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (2009) and Brilliant Destiny: The Age of Augustus John (2023).