SS Brighton Leaving Newhaven Harbour by Eric Ravilious
Painted in 1935, this watercolour shows the brightly-lit SS Brighton leaving the port of Newhaven for Dieppe in France on a night crossing. Ravilious returned to Newhaven Harbour several times to paint the ships, sometimes accompanied by his friend, fellow artist Edward Bawden. 
Ravilious had a fascination with landscape and place and was taught by one of the best landscape painters of the era at the Royal College of Art - Paul Nash. Watercolour had fallen out of fashion as a medium in the mid-19th century but was making a comeback at this time and the works of Nash and Ravillious gained a large following. Timeless and quintessentially British, the watercolours of Eric Ravilious have acquired a huge following in recent years. Although his life was cut tragically short due to his disappearance in 1942 when the aeroplane he was travelling in was lost off the coast of Iceland, Ravilious produced a prolific number of artworks. He painted nearly 100 watercolours and countless woodcuts, drawings, murals, illustrations and ceramic designs during his 39 years. One is left to imagine what he would have achieved had he lived. His paintings have been described as 'mystical', 'magical' and 'untranslatable'.
Other popular water paintings include Corn Stooks and Farmsteads, Hill Farm, Capel-yffin, Wales and also Vale of the White Horse.