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Articles> Women of Great Bardfield
The adage ‘Behind every great man there’s a great woman’ may be a bit of a cliché, but in the case of the Great Bardfield artists there were a number of talented women who played an important role in their husbands’ art careers while quietly getting on with their own art.
Intrigued by this undercurrent of creative industry in the face of the hardship the Depression and the Second World War must have placed in their way, the Fry Art Gallery in nearby Saffron Walden, Essex, has put on an exhibition in honour of The Women of Bardfield. The collection looks at the art produced by the wives and female contemporaries of Great Bardfield’s more famous men – Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, John Aldridge – and seeks to provide a unique insight into their lives.
The story starts in 1925 with Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious out cycling through the Essex countryside, when they come across the isolated village of Great Bardfield. Enamoured with the spot (and quite probably with the low rents), they rent the upstairs of Brick House for weekends and holidays, and eventually move with their new brides to the village. Over a period of years other artist friends join them, gradually turning the area into an artists’ community which lasts for the next 40 years.
‘These women have never been shown before as a group,’ says Fry Art Gallery committee member Judith Rodden, standing outside the small, highly-unusual, 19th century ‘gallery in the garden’ which houses over 1750 items dedicated largely to the Great Bardfield artists; including paintings, prints, books, Wedgwood china, textiles, wallpapers, boxes and rag rugs. ‘This is the first time we have devoted an exhibition to them. I’m not an ardent feminist but I do like women to be recognised for themselves, and I think these women must have been extraordinarily busy all the time. Yet they produced some lovely pieces.’
Central within the collection hangs a painting of Tirzah Garwood, painted by her friend Duffy Ayers. According to the Fry Art Gallery, Tirzah – who had been one of Eric Ravilious’ students at Eastbourne School of Art prior to marrying him – had already built up a reputation as a ‘highly distinctive wood engraver, with an eye for the idiosyncrasies of daily life, be it a striking wallpaper, a sweater, view or activity; all fiercely packed into the tight confines and compressed energy of a small wood engraving.’
However, her work in this medium virtually stopped after she married Eric, and instead she concentrated on pattern design for book covers and endpapers for Kynoch, Curwen and Golden Cockerel presses....
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