It comes at a time when Ravilious and his contemporary artist designers Edward Bawden and Edward Burra have been enjoying a considerable market resurgence at auction.
As reported in ATG, JS Auctions set a new record for Ravilious, when his watercolour Bathing Machines Aldeburgh took £265,000 on September 27. This broke the record set at Christie's on June 26 last year when Wiltshire Landscape fetched £200,000.
The Dulwich show will focus on the artist and designer's output as a watercolourist and features key works such as Westbury Horse (1939) and Train Landscape (1940) alongside rarely seen works from private collections.
Themes will include Relics and Curiosities, exploring his interest in objects, machinery and transport; Interiors, highlighting his depictions of domestic scenes, furniture and design; Figures & Forms, showing how he portrayed people, especially in the military during the war; Place & Season, a study of his treatment of topography, atmosphere and locations; and Changing Perspectives, looking at the way he composed works.
In all, the gallery will display more than 90 watercolours, complemented by selected lithographs, wood engravings and archive materials, to highlight common characteristics in Ravilious' painting.
Paul Nash Exhibition
Coincidentally, from March 3-9 Modern British art dealer Neil Jennings will stage a week-long selling exhibition of Paul Nash (1889-1946) - Ravilious' tutor at the Royal College of Art - photographs and Edward Bawden (1903-89) drawings and linocuts at the Art Workers' Guild in Queen Square London WC1N. The show also includes works by Ian Beck, Glynn Boyd Harte and Alan Powers.
Edward Burra Show
Meanwhile, the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings are planning an exhibition called In Focus: Edward Burra - A Rye View from February 26 to June 7.
Burra (1905-76), whose lifelong physical handicap resulting from chronic arthritis led him to paint in watercolour rather than oils, has recently been the focus of a major exhibition at Chichester's Pallant House Gallery (2011-12), a definitive biography and a Culture Show television special, and prices for his major works, featured prominently at art fairs such as Frieze Masters and the London Art Fair, have risen substantially.
The Jerwood display brings together a group of his watercolours depicting Hastings and Rye in a two-room show at the gallery.
