August is always one of the quietest months for new exhibitions, and this year is no different, but we do have one big event to alert you to, as well as two splendid shows that only have weeks to run. The one major opening is Gwen John: Strange Beauties at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Running from August 1 to January 4, this is a comprehensive retrospective of the work of the woman perhaps now seen as Wales's most significant artist, born 150 years ago this year. Maybe a little too comprehensive, according to some of the reviews of the show when it was on at the National Museum in Cardiff. The exhibition goes on to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in February and then at the end of July next year to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. We saw a rather smaller Gwen John exhibition in Chichester in 2023. Last chance to see.... Ending on August 23 is the exhibition at the Lakenhal in Leiden ...
You know Eric Ravilious , right? Those very English watercolour landscapes, understated and charming, that grace the covers of a surprising number of books. He's been the subject of a couple of exhibitions over the past few years, including one at Dulwich in 2015. But what about his wife? Bet you don't know a lot, if anything, about her. Her name was Tirzah Garwood, and as Mr and Mrs Ravilious , a quite splendid little show at the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden in Essex, demonstrates, she turns out to have been a really talented artist in her own right, making wonderfully observed and often very witty drawings and wood engravings. Tirzah was a student of Eric at the Eastbourne School of Art in the late 1920s, and they married in 1930. Along with Edward Bawden and his wife Charlotte, the Raviliouses moved to Great Bardfield in Essex, not that far from Saffron Walden, in the early 1930s. And here she is, depicted by Eric in this very domestic scene from 1933, shellin...