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Inspiration From Artists Wk 144 Featuring Artists : Tirzah Garwood and Ethelbert White.

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Paul (Dixie) Dean

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Welcome to this weeks thread the featuring artist this week are : Tirzah Garwood and Ethelbert White , Jenny will open the week with her introduction to Tirzah Garwood and on  Wednesday I will introduce Ethelbert White . I hope you will join in a find some artwork from the two artist that you particularly like.

Jenny Harris

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TIRZAH GARWOOD (1908 - 1951) was a British wood engraver and painter.  At the age of 17 she enrolled at Eastbourne School of Art where, under her young tutor, Eric Ravilious (whom she married five years later) she excelled in wood engraving, with satirical scenes of bourgeois life in 1920s Britain.  By 1927 she was already attracting attention for her work and receiving a number of prestigious commissions.  Wood engravings at this time were widely popular and she was recognised as one of the most promising and innovative artists of that era.  In 1928 she moved to Kensington and later studied at the Central School of Art. After her marriage to Eric Ravilious in 1930, whilst helping him with his wood engravings and paintings, she also started to exert her influence on his work.  The following year they moved to rural Essex where they initially lodged with Edward Bawden and his wife.  In 1933 together they designed and painted murals at the Midland Hotel in Morecambe, although she was given little recognition for her part in this work. By 1942 Eric Ravilious had become a successful war artist, but in September that year, aged 39, he was killed in action off the coast of Iceland, and she was left to raise their three young children alone.  However, she soon resumed her career as an artist and began painting in oils, often depicting scenes from nature, and this became one of the most productive periods in her life.  She remarried in 1946 but by 1950 was seriously ill in a nursing home.  Determined, though, to continue painting, she completed 20 small oil paintings during the year before her death. The first major exhibition of her work ‘Beyond Ravilious’ is now showing at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, ten years after their acclaimed exhibition ‘Ravilious’.  It is the first time the full extent of her output has been shown, with more than 80 of her works, including many of her oil paintings, on display. Initial design for mural at Midland Hotel

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Paul (Dixie) Dean

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Thank you Jenny for a very informative introduction and filling in a gap in my knowledge about her after her husbands death. 
With Sarah, Phil, Ellen, Rose the dentist, and the granddaughter whose name I forget.

Robert Jones, Napa

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I could have done without the one with the spider, but never mind: I have a phobia.  The lives of both Ravilious and Greenwood were cut cruelly short - that they achieved so much nonetheless is remarkable and a great tribute to them.  Life can be a very cruel business. 
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Andrew Roles

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Thank you for the intro Jenny, I love the examples you’ve shown. I think someone on the forum recommended the Sky documentary about Ravillious called ‘Drawn To War’ . It’s well worth a watch as it shows Tirzah’s role as stoic wife while Eric was off working as a war artist , and it also shows how she stuck by him through his earlier infidelities.  I’d love to see the Dulwich exhibition, but it’s an absolute pain to get there for me. Maybe I’ll get the book as an extra Xmas pressie. 
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Lewis Cooper

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I watched a documentary about Ravilious on BBC catch-up.  Very sad, and the authorities didn't treat Tirzah well following the death of her husband. I admire people who do woodcuts.  I don't think Tirzah's woodcuts are among the best I've seen, but they do have a certain charm.

Tessa Gwynne

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Fascinating introduction and work, thank you Jenny. Some of them are a little ‘busy’ for me but that doesn’t detract from her skills in wood cut which are very impressive. Sad that her life was cut short at such an early age. I love the dog show and the lady battling the wind above it, and could that be Hitler on the train!?
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Paul (Dixie) Dean

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Some more of her artwork, I looked for coloured versions of her work .
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Tony Auffret

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I am very much struck by the contrast between the precise realistic style of her woodcuts/engravings and the primitive/naive style of some of her paintings

Jenny Harris

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I think I prefer her wood engravings to her paintings.   A couple more. She also made stitchwork pictures. The artist with her first husband, Eric Ravilious.

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Alan Bickley

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Tremendous skill involved in all her work, although I’m not overly excited by much of it. Her woodcuts are impressive! I’ve tried it years ago, using rosewood I believe and it isn’t easy… I can’t do it!
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Paul (Dixie) Dean

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Well it seems that by chance Jenny and I chose two similar artists , both from the same era and both wood engravers. Ethelbert White 1891-1972. Was an English wood engraver, who was an early member of the Society of Wood Engravers and a founder member of the English Wood Engraving Society in 1925. White also worked in oil and watercolour, he was a member of the RWS and regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy. He came from a wealthy background , and had no need to sell his work for a living. In the early 1920s he bought an original Gypsy horse drawn caravan which he drove around London. The caravan also became the summer home for both himself and his wife Betty , as they drove around Surrey and Sussex. He enjoyed the simple life but it was the simple life of the rich as White bought a second home in Amberley as a studio for the winter months. White was a traditional English landscape artist , his subject matter was mostly the scenery of Southern England. After his death there were several Memorial Exhibitions,  notably by the Fine Art Society in 1979. Bio from Wikipedia. I hope you enjoy his work and the selection I have made . Like the previous artist I prefer his wood engravings to his oils or watercolours, but you make your own mind up as to which you prefer.
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