Ravilious Eric – Beachy Head Lighthouse – Belle Tout

DescriptionDescription: 1939; pencil and watercolour.  By the time Ravilious painted  Belle Tout it was being used as a private house, its use as lighthouse no longer needed due to the new lighthouse below the cliffs. It is as if Ravilious plays with this reversal: this lighthouse is now a house for light. Instead of looking from without at the lighthouse, you look from within, towards the new one. And bathed in refracted light you see the green of the promontory, the whiteness of the cliffs, and in the distance a light filled shimmering sea.