Fry Gallery/Saffron Walden

Friday I visited the Fry Gallery to see Eric Ravilious and the other artists of the nearby colony of Great Bardfield which included Edward Bawden and John Aldridge whose work was also exhibited.

It’s a small museum of basically one room which is also a shop.

Eric Ravilious was a Sussex painter who became a war artist.

There were not many victories to celebrate before El Alamein so as his personal wartime contribution Ravilious painted camouflage.

Sadly he died in 1942 in an air accident but an early loss of life can be a benefit: the works of Egon Schiele, Raphael and Amadeo Modigliani and Ravlious are now critically and commercially acclaimed.

Like many of the early British 20th Century modest artists he tended to work within a palette of brown and green.