Eric Ravilious - Printmaking and Illustration

Printmaking and Illustration

Ravilious engraved more than four hundred illustrations and drew over forty lithographic designs for books and publications during his lifetime. His first commission, in 1926, was to illustrate a novel for Jonathan Cape. He went on to produce work both for large companies such as the Lanston Corporation and smaller, less commercial publishers, such as the Golden Cockerel Press (for whom he illustrated an edition of Twelfth Night), the Curwen Press and the Cresset Press. His woodcut of two Victorian gentlemen playing cricket has appeared on the front cover of every edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack since 1938. Hiis style of wood-engraving was greatly influenced by that of Thomas Bewick.

In the mid-1930s he took up lithography, making a print of Newhaven Harbour for the "Contemporary Lithographs" scheme, and a set of full-page lithographs for a book called High Street, with text by J. M. Richards.