Eric Ravilious is celebrated for his watercolours of the South Downs, painted in the mid-20th century.

Yet the artist was in demand as a commercial artist. He designed watercolours, lithographs and graphics for London Transport and ceramics for Wedgewood.

“That commercial side gives a different view of Ravilious,” says Simon Martin, curator of a new exhibition of the celebrated Sussex artist.

“So many artists of the 1930s were versatile: they were not just reproducing fine art or working as designers, their work as a designer would influence the imagery in their watercolours.”

Ravilious also designed pattern papers, posters and advertisements, which show how he was able to apply this eye for design in other ways.

Martin says Ravilious’s training as a wood engraver informs many aspects of his work because “with that you need to understand positive and negative space and composition”.

Ravilious trained at the Royal College of Art in the early 1920s alongside Edward Bawden, Enid Marx, Barnett Freedman, Edward Burra and other students described collectively by Paul Nash as “an outbreak of talent”.

“So many of our most famous modern British artists were all there at that time and it is extra-ordinary really. It’s a bit like Goldsmiths in the late 1990s, where you have Damien Hirst and all the other YBAs (Young British Artists) – that creative moment where so much is happening.”

This new show featuring Ravilious’s first lithograph, Newhaven Harbour, made at the Curwen Press for John Piper’s Contemporary Lithographs series, fits with the gallery’s remit to mark local stories with national significance.

It coincides with two new books, one by respected Ravilious enthusiast Alan Powers and one focusing on the artist’s wood engravings by James Russell.

“There is a lot of interest in 1930s artists at the moment. It is interesting to see a revival of interest among artists and designers in the work of people such as Ravilious, Bawden, Nash and Burra.

“One of the things we as a gallery try to do is tap into those interests and ideally we want to attract artists as well as the general public.”

Martin believes the continued interest in Ravilious is thanks to the optimism in his work, “particularly in the lithographs he did in the 1930s. It’s a bit like the Towner earlier in the summer which had an exhibition of Lyons Tea designs.

“I think it has really touched a strain of interest in gallery-going audiences.”

Eastbourne’s Towner gallery is home to a lot of Ravilious’s work because he was raised in the town and studied at Eastbourne School Of Art from 1919 to 1922.

“They have lent us a number of engravings from their collection. They did a show focusing on his watercolours three years ago and we were thinking with our De Longhi Print Room at the gallery there has not been a focus on his prints thus far so it seemed an interesting area of his work to explore.”

The exhibition features wood engravings from the 1920s through to the work Ravilious did in colour lithography from 1937 onwards.

High-street lithographs of shop fronts are popular images, as are the submarine images he did during the Second World War, shortly before he was killed in 1942 while on an air sea rescue mission in Iceland.

There are ceramics he did for Wedgewood and advertisements and journal covers he did for the British Pavilion at New York’s 1939 World Trade Fair.

Martin, who says Ravilious helped raise the bar of commercial art by combining sophisticated techniques with playful and animated rhythms, highlights Newhaven Harbour from 1937 as one not to miss. “It shows a ferry coming into the harbour and is a local scene but it has that interest in nautical modernity in the 1930s – that positive modern imagery.”

  • Eric Ravilious: Prints is at Pallant House Gallery, North Pallant, Chichester, from Saturday, October 12 to Sunday, December 8. Open Tues to Sat 10am to 5pm, Thurs 10am to 8pm, Sun 11am to 5pm. Adults £9, children £3.50, students £5.50. Call 01243 774557
  • Also opening at Pallant House Gallery on October 12 is The Nicholsons And Their Circle: The Mill House Collection, which is drawn from a rare private collection coming to Pallant House on long-term loan. The exhibition includes works by Sir William Nicholson and his wife Mabel Pryde, their sons Ben and Kit Nicholson, and partners Winifred and EQ Nicholson, plus friends such as Lucian Freud and John Craxton.