Light fantastic

The most unusual picture in the exhibition of work by Eric Ravilious at Dulwich Picture Gallery, in terms of subject-matter at least, is entitled ‘Bomb Defusing Equipment’. In other ways — crisp linear precision, a designer’s eye for the melodious arrangement of shapes — it is typical of Ravilious. Characteristic, too, is the way he has given these implements associated with warfare and high explosives an almost jaunty air, shading into melancholy mysteriousness.

That’s the Ravilious note, and I must admit I find it irresistible. Ravilious (1903–42) was one of the most beguiling of mid-20th-century British artists. Yet it is still not quite clear what position he has in art history: high or low, important or insignificant. The other day in conversation a well-known painter, pausing to find the correct term for Ravilious’s pictures, settled on ‘slight’.

Perhaps she was correct, in that he was, in musical terms, more of a Cole Porter than a Webern.