Ravilious - Drawn to War

Like many others it seems, I enjoyed the new film about Eastbourne artist Eric Ravilious - "Ravilious - Drawn to War".  So much so I've already seen it twice - once at the cinema, once at home on Curzon's great new home streaming service.

The film is framed by Ravilious's death in the Second World War.  His life, marriage, affairs and of course paintings and designs are all explored - up to the point he disappeared on an RAF flight off the coast of Iceland.  The story's told in extracts from letters and his wife Tirzah's autobiography; interviews with admirers, experts and family members; and rare photographs from family collections and some previously unseen footage (of Ravilious and Tirzah's marriage in London in 1930). 

It's this footage which particularly sparked our interest - for what it showed about how Eastbourne's different social classes interacted in the first half of the last century. I thought I detected in the film's grainy sequence the unease felt by both Eric and Tirzah's families at what was happening that day.  

Tirzah was the daughter of a well-connected Lieutenant Colonel who'd retired to Eastbourne.  And her mother came from a wealthy Belfast shipping family.  Eric on the other hand was the grammar school educated son of a shopkeeper.  

Tirzah's class were those wealthy individuals and families who'd first holidayed in Eastbourne in the Victorian times, then settled in the large villas across the town in the decades following.  The villas now converted into nursing homes, split into multiple occupation, or otherwise knocked down and replaced by modern blocks of flats.  

The family home was on Arundel Road.  This was on the margins of the wide tree-lined avenues, elegant terraced squares and public gardens that made up what would have then been clearly identifiable as the Upperton estate.  (The house, like many of its kind, is gone now, replaced by a 1970s block of flats.  But some of the old trees remain in the gardens at the back - the house was called Elmwood, as is the block which replaced it.)

Tirzah's father served as a Poor Law Guardian, overseeing arrangements at the Old Town workhouse - a role then regarded as philanthropy.  He dabbled in politics, standing unsuccessfully for a ratepayers' party whose sole political aim was to curtail local government standing.  Tirzah attended one of the many private schools which existed in the town - West Hill, on the corner of Mill Road and Carew Road - again demolished.  Then to the art school, where her teacher was Ravilious.

Ravilious's background was the other end of the social scale.  His family lived in a modest terrace on Glynde Avenue, north of Hampden Park.  His father sold antiques (or maybe bric-a-brac) from a shop at the back of the Grand Hotel - so a living dependent on selling goods to people like Tirzah's parents.  He was declared bankrupt eventually, and also had an eccentric religious side - behaviour which caused Eric much embarrassment.

Tirzah was expected to marry someone else - a local man from a similar army family who took up a role with the Colonial Service in Africa.  Tirzah's account in her autobiography of how this dilemma played out is a screenplay waiting to be written.  But it was Ravilious she chose, and her life took a course quite different from the one on which her social background might otherwise have sent her.  

As ever in life, these things are never quite black and white.  Tirzah's father grew fond of Ravilious, and showed kindness to Eric's father during his final illness.  Her family always seemed at hand to support the couple as they navigated children and then her illness.  And Tirzah herself wrote warmly of Eric's mother.  

In the end, the thing which strikes anyone who grows familiar with the Ravilious story is this - the main characters all have their foibles, whichever layer of society they belong to; but they're still people you'd love to have known, to have met.