ID: 700001824 Page link: http://vocab.getty.edu/page/cona/700001824	Record Type: Movable Work
Images: 1

Coastal defences (watercolor (painting); Eric Ravilious (British painter, wood-engraver, and designer...; 1940; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, Welling...; registration number: 1949-0008-9)

Note: Eric Ravilious was a printmaker, watercolourist and war artist whose reputation has always stood high. A contemporary of Henry Moore at the Royal College of Art, London, in the 1920s, he was respected by moderns and conservatives alike. While his work has abstract qualities in its pictorial structure and handling of space, it always remains figurative in what it depicts. A fine example is his watercolour Coastal defences, one of several with this title. Its focus is a gun emplacement whose location is not specified, probably for security reasons. However, the chalk cliffs suggest its proximity to Newhaven, on the English south coast, where Ravilious was working in October 1940. The date closely follows the Dunkirk evacuation and the Battle of Britain, when German invasion posed a formidable threat.Ravilious was an artist ‘who passionately enjoyed drawing everything - from cats and crocuses to battleships’ and was not, according to critic Christopher Neve, ‘easily distracted by the horrors of war’. Yet Coastal defences is one of his most austerely serious and impressive war paintings. The quirkiness and whimsicality evident, for example, in Ravilious’s Wedgwood coronation mug, 1937, is deliberately purged. Instead, we see a landscape of deftly woven patches of colour, which constitute earth and sky. Their leaden tonalities evoke military camouflage. The aircraft flying overhead looks strangely vulnerable. Its cross-like shape suggests sacrifice and is echoed by the nearby mast. Small figures guard the emplacement, and the gun turns towards enemy-occupied France. Barbed wire runs across the composition, helping to anchor it but also making the emplacement’s military function clear.The geometrical qualities of the fortifications appealed to Ravilious, and these are subtly echoed in the dark, heavily worked foreground zone. The landscape, with its multitude of scribbles and stipples, is carefully wrought, expressing the analogy that he surely felt between his areas of paint and the geology of his beloved, and threatened, south coast. Ravilious himself was a war victim. Within two years of this painting, in September 1942, he joined an air-sea rescue flight over Iceland as an observer. The plane disappeared and no trace of it was ever found.

Titles:

Coastal defences (preferred,C,U,RP,English,U,U)

Catalog Level: item

Work Types:

watercolor (painting) [300078925] (preferred)

..... (Objects Facet, Visual and Verbal Communication (hierarchy name), Visual Works (hierarchy name), visual works (works), <visual works by material or technique>, paintings (visual works), <paintings by material or technique>)

landscape (representation) [300015636]

..... (Objects Facet, Visual and Verbal Communication (hierarchy name), Visual Works (hierarchy name), visual works (works), <visual works by subject type>)

Classifications:

paintings (preferred)

Creation Date: 1940

Creator Display:

Eric Ravilious (British painter, wood-engraver, and designer, 1903-1942) [preferred,VP]

artist Ravilious, Eric William (English painter, wood engraver, and designer, 1903-1942) [500014911]

Locations:

Current: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand) [500311561] Corporate Bodies (Corp. Body)

Repository Numbers: registration number: 1949-0008-9

Credit Line: Gift of the New Zealand Government, 1949

Display Materials: watercolour and pencil

	watercolor (paint) [300015045]
	.......(Materials Facet, Materials (hierarchy name), materials (substances), <materials by function>, coating (material), <coating by form>, paint (coating), <paint by composition or origin>, water-base paint)

	graphite pencils [300022443]
	.......(Objects Facet, Furnishings and Equipment (hierarchy name), Tools and Equipment (hierarchy name), equipment, <equipment by process>, image-making equipment, <equipment for drafting| drawing| and writing>, <drafting| drawing and writing equipment by specific type>, pencils (drawing and writing equipment))

	paper (fiber product) [300014109]
	.......(Materials Facet, Materials (hierarchy name), materials (substances), <materials by form>, <materials by physical form>, <fiber and fiber by product>, <fiber by product>)

Dimensions: 464 x 590 mm

General Subject:

landscapes (preferred)

military

Specific Subjects:

	garrisons [300000455]
	.....(Objects Facet, Built Environment (hierarchy name), Built Complexes and Districts (hierarchy name), complexes (buildings and sites), <complexes by function>, military installations) (AAT)

	artillery (firearms) [300036931]
	.....(Objects Facet, Furnishings and Equipment (hierarchy name), Weapons and Ammunition (hierarchy name), weapons, projectile weapons, <projectile weapons with explosive propellant>, firearms) (AAT)

	war [300055314]
	.....(Activities Facet, Events (hierarchy name), events (activities), armed conflicts) (AAT)

	coastal fortification [300048803]
	.....(Objects Facet, Built Environment (hierarchy name), Single Built Works (hierarchy name), single built works (built environment), <single built works by specific type>, <single built works by function>, fortifications (built environment)) (AAT)

	coastal environment [300225203]
	.....(Objects Facet, Object Groupings and Systems (hierarchy name), object groupings, <object groupings by specific context>, environments (object groupings)) (AAT)

	aircraft [300212527]
	.....(Objects Facet, Furnishings and Equipment (hierarchy name), Transportation Vehicles (hierarchy name), vehicles (transportation), air and space transportation vehicles) (AAT)

	soldiers [300185678]
	.....(Agents Facet, People (hierarchy name), people (agents), <people by occupation>, <people in military occupations>) (AAT)

	world war [300247280]
	.....(Activities Facet, Events (hierarchy name), events (activities), armed conflicts, wars) (AAT)

List/Hierarchical Position:

..... Movable Works

.......... Movable Works by class: drawings, paintings, prints, other two-dimensional media

Sources and Contributors:
Coastal defences	........ [VP,TePapa]
	........ Te Papa online (2000-) http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/ObjectDetails.aspx?oid=40139; accessed 22 August 2012
	........ Te Papa spreadsheet (2012)

Subject: ....... [VP,TePapa]

....................... Te Papa online (2000-) accessed 22 August 2012

....................... Te Papa spreadsheet (2012)

Note:
English	..... [VP]
	..... Te Papa online (2000-) accessed 22 August 2012