Ravilious, Eric – Commander of a Submarine Looking Through a Periscope (1941)

DescriptionOne of ten famous lithographs known collectively as The Submarine Series. Initially commissioned by the War Artist’s Committee in 1940, but then rejected by them leaving Ravilious free to experiment and depict as he pleased. And Ravilious enjoyed this project: the scene in the interiors, he writes, is “extraordinarily good…There are small coloured lights about the place and the complexity of a Swiss clock”. (Ravilious to E. M. O’Rourke Dickey, 2nd Aug 1940; from correspondence held at the Imperial War Museum). This is printed to the original size of the lithograph.