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拍品专文
Eric Ravilious was appointed an official war artist at the end of 1939. He began to make drawings of submarines and their interiors at HMS Dolphin, the submarine base in Gosport, Hampshire, in early 1940. Describing his experiences of being at sea onboard a submarine he observed:
'It is awfully hot below when submarines dive and every compartment small and full of people at work. However, this is a change from the destroyers and I enjoy the complete calm after the North Sea - there is no roll or movement at all in submarines, which is one condition in their favour - apart from the peculiar submarine smell, the heat and the noise. There is something jolly good about it, if I can only manage it, a blue gloom with coloured lights and everyone in shirts and braces. People go to sleep in odd positions across tables'.
Working from these studies and official photographs he set about developing designs for a series of lithographs which the War Artist's Committee proposed to publish as a children's colouring book. The Committee abandoned the project due to the envisaged cost of publication, and Ravilious decided to publish them himself. Avoiding dry documentation, Ravilious simplified detail, abandoned conventional perspective and playfully superimposed images, evoking a sense of the strangeness of these mechanical leviathans and the men who operate them. We share the view from the commander's periscope as it is mysteriously projected onto the submarine wall (see lot 58); we observe a cruising submarine, above the water and below, from four different angles simultaneously and are left with a vivid impression of humming machinery, vibrating dials, flashing instruments, hatches and ladders, all bathed in a strange, preternatural light.
Apart from one complete set of the Submarine Lithographs, sold at Christie's South Kensington (4 April 2007, lot 77, £102,000), only one other impression of the present work has been offered at auction in the last thirty years.
'It is awfully hot below when submarines dive and every compartment small and full of people at work. However, this is a change from the destroyers and I enjoy the complete calm after the North Sea - there is no roll or movement at all in submarines, which is one condition in their favour - apart from the peculiar submarine smell, the heat and the noise. There is something jolly good about it, if I can only manage it, a blue gloom with coloured lights and everyone in shirts and braces. People go to sleep in odd positions across tables'.
Working from these studies and official photographs he set about developing designs for a series of lithographs which the War Artist's Committee proposed to publish as a children's colouring book. The Committee abandoned the project due to the envisaged cost of publication, and Ravilious decided to publish them himself. Avoiding dry documentation, Ravilious simplified detail, abandoned conventional perspective and playfully superimposed images, evoking a sense of the strangeness of these mechanical leviathans and the men who operate them. We share the view from the commander's periscope as it is mysteriously projected onto the submarine wall (see lot 58); we observe a cruising submarine, above the water and below, from four different angles simultaneously and are left with a vivid impression of humming machinery, vibrating dials, flashing instruments, hatches and ladders, all bathed in a strange, preternatural light.
Apart from one complete set of the Submarine Lithographs, sold at Christie's South Kensington (4 April 2007, lot 77, £102,000), only one other impression of the present work has been offered at auction in the last thirty years.