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January 2025
If you are looking for something to do over the holidays, I can recommend a trip to my favourite art gallery. The Dulwich Picture Gallery was designed by Sir John Soane and is an architectural masterpiece. It now houses a world class collection of paintings and hosts fascinating temporary exhibitions, and happens to be only a short walk from my front door. I’ve just visited the Tirzah Garwood exhibition there and I think it is one of the best collections I have seen in years. Tirzah Garwood was a prolific engraver, painter and collage maker working in the mid-20th century. She was married to the artist Eric Ravilious and her talent was overshadowed by his fame as a war artist, killed in action in 1942. Garwood’s life was also tragically cut short by cancer, and it is only now that the true breadth of her talent has been revealed with this retrospective exhibition.
I was most struck by her work as a collage artist, as she produced a large series of ‘portraits’ of houses in box frames. Collages made of paper, card and a modelling paste called Sankey’s Pyruma. She focussed on vernacular architecture and scenes local to her which included cutout illustrations of people and pets. Her work has a remarkable naive quality, instantly calming and gentle. A miniature world captured with a slightly wobbly simplicity, but with great attention to detail. The viewer is drawn into the frame by the use of painted backgrounds and the layering of cutout card and paper to emulate something of a cross between a dolls’ house and one of those Victorian paper theatres.
In comparison to my work, the subject matter is similar but the treatment is very different. I immediately felt I was learning a new approach from the past, less focussed on accuracy and architecture and more about small details, trees and flowers, flags and bunting, dogs and prams, populating these three-dimensional illustrations with childlike charm.
Visit the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Exhibition Tirzah Garwood Beyond Ravilious. Open until 26th May 2025.
