For years, she was best known as Mrs Eric Ravilious. But recently Tirzah Garwood has been recognised as a multi-talented artist and designer in her own right. The first major retrospective of her work, Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious at Dulwich Picture Gallery (until 26 May), has awoken many to her versatility, showing 80 of her oil paintings and pencil sketches, wood engravings, experimental marbled papers and paper collage dioramas.
Now Cheffins auction house in Cambridge, UK, will sell the first archive of work to come to the market by Garwood in its Art & Design Sale on 22 May.
The archive has been consigned by the granddaughter of the artist Frederick Austin, who was friends with Ravilious and Garwood and lived with them in Hammersmith for a time. It is thought that Garwood gave the works to Austin before the Second World War. Ravilious died in action as a war artist in 1942 when the plane he was in crashed off the coast of Iceland. He left behind Garwood, who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer, and three young children. Garwood also died tragically young, of cancer, in 1951 aged just 42, but she referred to the last year of her life as her happiest, producing 20 oil painting, sometimes in bed, while in a nursing home.
Ella Ravilious, the niece of Garwood’s last surviving child, Anne Ullmann, and a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, says the archive coming up at Cheffins was unknown to the family until the auction house contacted them.
“Both Tirzah and her husband Eric died young, and their three children were sent off to boarding schools and to live with friends, so all of their works ended up scattered across the country,” Ravilious says. “But I was hopeful that more works would come to light like this as a result of the current exhibition about Tirzah Garwood at the Dulwich Picture Gallery…It was very moving for the family, in particular my aunt, who is their last surviving child, to see these fantastic pieces, especially some of Tirzah’s more informal drawings.”
A study of dogs from one of Garwood’s sketch books from around 1927, estimated to sell for £3,000 to £5,000
The archive includes four wood engravings from The Seasons series, a further ten signed and numbered wood engravings, some pencil sketches, and a sketch book from around 1927. With individual estimates between £600 and £5,000, it is estimated to make around £30,000 in total.
“Having long been in the shadows of her late husband’s fame, Tirzah Garwood’s work is now having its time in the spotlight,” says Brett Tryner, the director at Cheffins. “The current exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery has really helped to propel her into the public conscience and we are hopeful that this archive of works will draw interest from across the country and overseas. Her current deserved popularity and that of her late husband is down to the efforts of her children who continually have worked with institutions and galleries nationwide to ensure that they remain an important part of English art history. This sale may present the only opportunity for collectors to acquire works by Tirzah in order to add to this ever-increasing popular genre of Modern British art.”
Cheffins has sold Garwood’s work before—for instance, Nathaniel and Patsy, two donkeys in a stable with chicken which sold for £24,000 in 2017 (and is included in the Dulwich show), and Train Journey, a wood engraving which sold for £11,000 in 2022.
