A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE

Married artists Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood built their careers in the 1930s and 40s, but only now - after an exhibition and auction of her work – is Tirzah getting her due recognition

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Last April, Brett Tryner, director of Fine Art at Cheffins in Cambridge, took an intriguing call from a potential client. She had a collection of Tirzah Garwood artworks in her possession - could she have them valued?

Like many art lovers, he had recently been to see the exhibition, 'Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious’, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, which ran from November 2024 to May 2025. The solo retrospective traced her journey from growing up in Eastbourne to studying at Eastbourne School of Art, where she met her future husband, Eric Ravilious. It then followed her life as a family woman, who continued painting and drawing until weeks before her death in 1951.

Until now, Garwood’s artistic output has been overshadowed by that of Eric, an official war artist in the Second World War, who was killed while accompanying an RAF air sea rescue mission off Iceland in 1942. Now, some 80 years on, Eric’s work is highly sought after and original paintings make six figure sums. In comparison, few Garwood artworks have ever come up for auction, and Cheffins Sold the last two to emerge. The first, in 2017, was her lovely painting of donkeys,