LONDON.- In autumn 2024, ten years after its critically acclaimed show Ravilious, Dulwich Picture Gallery welcomes back guest Curator James Russell to present the first major exhibition devoted to British artist and designer Tirzah Garwood (1908 – 1951). Known for her autobiography Long Live Great Bardfield and as the wife of Eric Ravilious (1903 – 1942), Garwood excelled as a fine artist and printmaker.
Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious will be the first time the full extent of her output will be shown, giving the artist’s captivating works the critical examination and public showcase they deserve as gems of the mid- 20th century. The retrospective offers a rare opportunity to view more than eighty of Garwood’s works, including most of her existing oil paintings, almost exclusively from private collections. The exhibition introduces an artist whose creativity flourished in the face of adversity, unveiling Garwood’s ‘sophisticated naïve’ approach that allowed her to infuse apparently innocent or straightforward subjects with deeper meanings.
Included in the exhibition, ten watercolours by Eric Ravilious will draw out the thematic similarities, shared interests, and distinct artistic personalities of this remarkable creative couple. From their first meeting in 1926, when Garwood began studying wood engraving with Ravilious at Eastbourne School of Art, their creative and personal lives were intertwined.
A quick learner, Garwood exhibited with The Society of Wood Engravers only a year later. Critics were captivated by her precocious skill and mischievous humour, demonstrated in a series of unconventional self-portraits. In Relations (1929), Garwood brought her satirical eye to bear on her family, through a clever use of perspective and pattern, and an innate ability to bring people to life. While she learned the techniques of wood engraving from Ravilious, Garwood encouraged him to explore everyday life in his work: influence flowed both ways.
The exhibition presents a series of Garwood’s experimental marbled papers, which were ordered by publishers, interior design shops and private clients. Juggling the demands of motherhood and her creative practice, she pioneered a distinctive decorative style, layering delicate repeat patterns to create harmonious designs that were unlike anything being made in Europe.
Representing all areas of her practice, the exhibition includes Garwood’s tender pencil sketches also created during this period, which depict her children John, James, and Anne. In 1942, the artist faced a tragic year, with first an emergency mastectomy for breast cancer, before losing Ravilious while he served as a war artist. Garwood grieved, recuperated, and rallied, writing her autobiography and making her first oil paintings in the years following. Adopting a deliberately naive, direct style, and focusing on children’s toys, she created works that are straightforward yet strange. A series of paintings show a sophisticated creative mind at play, including highlights Horses and Trains (1944), Etna (1944) and, slightly later, The Old Soldier (1947).
After marrying BBC Producer Henry Swanzy in 1946, Garwood created a series of house 'portraits', inspired by the creativity of her children and the post-war Pictures for Schools exhibitions. A new and original take on a popular folk-art motif, these collaged paper constructions display Garwood’s technical precision and ability to breathe life into the inanimate.
The exhibition concludes with a series of works created during the final year of Garwood’s life. Due to her declining health and the recurrence of cancer, Garwood moved into a nursing home, where she died on 27 March 1951. Perhaps surprisingly, Garwood described this as the ‘happiest year’ of her life. Taking inspiration from the countryside she had always loved, the flowers and insects that fascinated her, and the illustrated Victorian children’s books she carried with her, she made a series of small, jewel-like paintings. Idyllic but unsettling, down-to-earth but dreamlike, paintings such as Springtime of Flight, Hornet and Wild Roses, Weewak’s Kitten and The Spanish Lady obliquely address her predicament. These works will fill the last room of the Gallery, a fitting monument to this dynamic, irrepressible artist.
Jennifer Scott, Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery, said: “At last! Audiences will be able to discover this accomplished, visionary artist who has been overlooked for too long. Ten years after the success of our groundbreaking Ravilious exhibition, we are thrilled to be showing this equally important voice – an artist who carved fairytales out of difficult times, and whose works deserve to be celebrated and will spark our creative imaginations.”
James Russell, Curator of the exhibition, said: “Tirzah Garwood found her subjects in the everyday world around her, from members of her family to pets, insects, toys and buildings. Whatever her clear gaze rested on, her playful imagination and skill in technique and composition transformed into something strange, magical and utterly captivating. Curating this exhibition has been like opening a box of treasures.”
James Russell previously curated the critically acclaimed Ravilious (2015), and Edward Bawden (2018) shows at the Gallery. A full colour catalogue will be released alongside the exhibition, featuring new research, plate images of each work and special essays by Ella Ravilious, Eric and Tirzah’s granddaughter, and writer Jennifer Higgie. A lively public programme will invite audiences to further explore Garwood’s story through talks, workshops, tours and special events, and the audio guide available via the Gallery’s Bloomberg app will feature commentary by celebrated actress Tamsin Greig who voiced Tirzah Garwood in the 2022 film Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War.
