Best in show

“I like this picture because it’s enormous fun and kind of wild; it screams the early 1930s at you.

Edward Burra was an outrageous figure who produced vast vibrant watercolours. He eventually became successful at designing costumes and scenery for the ballet.

This was to have been his first work for the theatre, a stage design for a performance of Lysistrata by Frederick Ashton. It was, however, never used as the great choreographer changed his mind and decided to do Constant Lambert’s Rio Grande instead, for which Burra ended up designing sets and a backcloth.

Burra appears in this exhibition because he was one of a group of eight artists described as ‘an outbreak of talent’ by Paul Nash when he looked back on his days teaching at the Royal College of Art.

Some of the group entered the pantheon while others rather drifted away. Two of the more well-known figures were Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious, men with very strong local connections and mainstays of our collection.

Six years ago, we held an exhibition featuring work by 15 living artists who acknowledged a debt to those two and I subsequently thought it would be a logical step to then go back to explore Bawden and Ravilious’s own influences.

Last year, I met with a representative of the British Museum to discuss a joint project based on the National Collection of Prints and Drawings.

Our chairman half-remembered the Nash quote and, when we tracked it down, we realised we had the hook for the show.

The exhibition features a range of very different work in very different styles and it does rather scream ‘bright young things’ at you as you wander around.

Bawden and Ravilious initially settled in the nearby Essex village of Great Bardfield when they sought solace from the rather riotous partying in London during their days at the Royal College.

By sheer accident, the village then became a hub for artists but there was never a recognised ‘school’ like Newlyn. It was simply a place where artistic people liked to gather.

Both men were war artists. Ravilious died in 1942 during an air sea rescue off Iceland, but Bawden – who survived being torpedoed in the Atlantic and internment in Casablanca before making his way through the Middle East – returned to teach at the Royal College, spending weekends at Great Bardfield.

Many of his students came to visit, so another generation of artists including the likes of Sheila Robinson, Bernard Cheese and Walter Hoyle discovered the village, especially when they found they could move into dilapidated cottages for next to nothing.”

An Outbreak of Talent runs until 30 June

Gordon Cummings is the honorary secretary of the Fry Art Gallery and the curator of An Outbreak of Talent