It is exactly as shown, yet I think Ravilious must primarily have chosen subjects that worked for him as suggestive spatial compositions with a particular play of light. The objects and buildings in them were 'as found', and in this way certainly added a mood, just as they had done for other painters for centuries. A perfectionist, if he started a subject that didn't satisfy him, he usually tore up the paper – four times out of five, according to his wife, the artist Tirzah Garwood. Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’ Ross fights at the Battle of Waterloo and explores the world, meeting Byron and Shelley, brewing German beer in America and attempting to discover the source of the Nile.

The Real and the Romantic by Frances Spalding review

A gloriously old-fashioned and sumptuous read. William Boyd is as good as ever as he ages. He's now in his Seventies and his writing is as fine as ever. This is a "whole life" novel telling the fictional story of Cashel Greville Ross, whose long life spans the 19th Century. After a brief introduction, setting out Spurling’s vision of the plurality of British visual art in the inter-war period, she sets out trends and movements in twelve chapters.You constantly want to see how Cashel will manage to get himself out of various scrapes and I kept willing him on. He’s a likeable, decent and well-meaning character who helps others, with as the title suggests a strong romantic side. I was rooting for him all the way hoping his life would turn out well. Boyd is a supremely accomplished writer and once again he’s delivered a novel that’s grabbed me and taken me on a rollercoaster ride in the company of a man I grew to like and eventually to care for. I truly enjoyed my journey with Cashel Greville Ross with its many adventures, twists and turns, over the course of the best part of a century. Staunch conservatism jostles with energetic revivalism’, she writes, in her introduction. ‘Allusions to the classical past or the early Italian Renaissance become aligned with the pulse of the new; the pursuit of the modern and international is suddenly trumped by the return to native traditions, the local and vernacular’. In The Romantic we follow the life of Cashel Greville Ross who, you might be forgiven for thinking, was a real person, such is the mastery of Boyd's work. Ross begins life ignominiously enough but he makes the most of the opportunities that come his way. Although I can't help thinking that things happen to Mr Ross rather than him making them occur. In fact when he does have an idea of how to proceed in life it invariably means disaster to some extent.

The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars

She also gives context and historical depth to the various movements and this creates a rich narrative where you can see the art as a response to wider issues in the world. Bookended by the intensity of commemoration that followed World War I and by a darkening of mood brought about by the foreshadowing of World War II, the decades between the wars saw the growing influence of modernism across British art and design. But as modernism reached a peak in the mid-1930s, artists were simultaneously reviving native traditions in modern terms and working with a renewed concern for place, memory, history, and particularity. In the years leading up to his death, Ravilious told his friends how dissatisfied he was becoming with his work. It was a form of mid-life crisis, no doubt, that he could have resolved had he lived longer, yet the curtailment of his life places him precisely within an epoch. If we take the title of Frances Spalding's book, he contrives to be both Real and Romantic simultaneously, yet the romanticism is all the stronger for its understatement and its anchorage to realism. Cashel is not a real person, of course, although Boyd does his best to convince us that he is. The book is presented as a biography, complete with footnotes, pieced together from a bundle of letters, notes, maps and photographs which apparently fell into Boyd’s hands several years ago. It’s not a new idea, but it’s very cleverly done here and I can almost guarantee that you’ll be googling things to see if they’re true, even while knowing that they can’t possibly be! Boyd spent eight years in academia, during which time his first film, Good and Bad at Games, was made. When he was offered a college lecturership, which would mean spending more time teaching, he was forced to choose between teaching and writing.

This amply illustrated volume is a gripping read whether for new collectors looking for tips, art lover or expert'

The real and romantic: the life and work of Eric Ravilious The real and romantic: the life and work of Eric Ravilious

It’s a great achievement by Boyd to produce this book and it’s thoroughly enjoyable with flashes of humour, warmth and fascinating insights into some interesting real- life characters like Byron and Richard Burton from the Nineteenth century.The Romantic is certainly one of those. I absolutely adored this story and it goes up there as one of my books of the year. A really interesting overview outlining trends and movements in English art , but with a “jerky” style, as if sections about particular artists or works have been “dropped” into the more unified narrative. Ross, the illegitimate son of the big house, a drummer boy at Waterloo, an officer in the Indian Army refusing to carry out an atrocity, by his late twenties he has partied with Byron and the Shelleys in Italy, had a frenzied affair with an Italian noblewoman, published his first novel, been defrauded, imprisoned for debt and emigrated to the United States to build an ideal community. With his loyal servant Ignatz, he starts the first Lager brewery in America, marries, fathers two daughters, attempts to find the source of the Nile, begins a feud with Burton and Speke, becomes a Consul in Trieste, meets again the love of his youth, Countess Raphaella, but perhaps, all too late.

The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between - Waterstones

Paul Nash, Gwen John, Henry Moore, Eric Ravilious, Ben Nicholson and Stanley Spencer all feature in this fresh and enlightening new look at English art between 1918 and 1939, which travels from modernism to English pastoral and embraces a host of lesser male and female figures in its broad and highly assured sweep' Cashel's life begins in County Cork, Ireland. He lives with his aunt who works for the local landowner. Later when he and his aunt move to England he gradually comes to understand that his upbringing wasn't quite what he thought and this prompts him to leave home early and join the army. From here his life is a series of non-stop adventures: he is a soldier in Waterloo and India, a farmer in the US, a smuggler in Trieste, an explorer in East Africa, a prisoner in the Marshalsea in London, a writer who befriends Byron and Shelley. He is a man who follows his gut instinct wherever it takes him and who never gets over his first great love. At times I thought things were going to take a different direction and if anything it highlights the way that impulsive decisions shape your life and that there are always multiple ways that things could unspool.

Ross is a headstrong and an impulsive character, so his reaction to a situation or an idea is to rush into action. Often this means that his excitement or simply following his gut-feel can end up pushing him in some unpredictable directions. Sometimes this works in his favour but it’s a trait that also causes him much regret and angst throughout his life. A rover by nature, he travels to mainland Europe, Asia, Africa and America as his various schemes and his travails play out. Travel and communications being what they were in the 19th Century it could take him months to reach a destination or even to get a message to someone in another continent. In consequence, his life is complicated, with a tendency for loose ends to be created. We made our way up to the piano nobile where LB greeted us. He is quite short and, not to put too fine a point on it, very plump. His face is plump, his hands are plump, his fingers are plump. Hair receding, also. He introduced us to his mistress, Contessa Guiccioli, very young, 18–20, I’d say, who matches her paramour in plumpness but, however, is very beautiful with it, speaking hardly a word of English but, looking at her very ample figure, let’s say its noticeable prominences, it is not her anglophony that explains her attraction to LB, I would venture.