In the 73 years since her death, artist and printmaker Tirzah Garwood (1908-51) has mostly been “Mrs. Eric Ravilious.” Now, a decade after the Dulwich Picture Gallery’s famous Ravilious survey, Garwood is in the spotlight in an exhibition that reveals for the first time the full extent of his talent and production.

Curator James Russell first saw Garwood’s work 20 years ago while searching for the exhibition that would bring Ravilious back into the public consciousness. Since then, Russell says, he’s been “looking for an opportunity to put on a show; the problem is that it is so obscure. Even for an overlooked artist, she’s incredibly overlooked.

Garwood’s moment arrived with the 2012 publication of his lively and witty autobiography. Long live Greater Bardfieldfollowed in 2022 by the word-of-mouth hit film Eric Ravilious: attracted to war. For Dulwich, which has always championed women artists from Berthe Morisot to Winifred Knights, the exhibition is a natural step, following on from its 2018 exhibition. Edward Bawden, dedicated to Garwood and Ravilious’s great friend with whom they lived in Great Bardfield in Essex between 1932 and 1934.

A “clear, precise and witty” style

Although she was successful before the age of 20, Garwood is primarily recognized for the assistance she gave Ravilious in the early years of their marriage, when she cut out the backgrounds for his woodcuts. Although she was able to assimilate his style when necessary, Garwood’s distinctive and unconventional hand, Russell says, is “clear, precise and witty.” The exhibition will feature more than 80 of his rarely seen works, from oil paintings to prints, sketches, collages, textiles and patterned papers.

Garwood met Ravilious at Eastbourne School of Art where he taught him the burgeoning medium of woodcut. But his collection of Victorian books was his formative influence, reflected in early woodcuts which reveal his love of natural history and talent for satire. This resulted in Reportsa series of humorous vignettes from everyday life, commissioned in 1930 by Curwen Press, but never published. Although Ravilious supported Garwood’s work, the pressures of marriage and domestic life diverted her talents toward quiltmaking and needlework in which she sometimes reprized earlier prints.

A move to Castle Hedingham in Essex in 1935 was a turning point and Garwood established herself as one of the country’s finest marble makers, selling decorative papers to London design boutiques and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Diary extracts from 1941 reveal an appalling pace of work, with paper orders jostling between making jam, caring for a baby and two others under the age of seven. Ravilious’s death followed Garwood’s breast cancer diagnosis in 1942; From that point on, Russell says, her work “immediately took off with a bang,” as she moved to oil paints, creating strange and unsettling scenes that combined a rustic Victorian style with a childlike eye, and sometimes a complicit dialogue with Ravilious. The surrealist sensibility strengthened during the last year of his life, with his ghostly self-portrait, Spanish lady (1950), which recalls the work of Leonora Carrington.

For Russell, these latter works have a particular force. “Was she an important artist? For me, in her terrible situation when she knew she was going to leave her children (in death), she found a language to talk about it that was unlike anyone else’s. I think it’s an extraordinary achievement.

• Tirzah Garwood: Beyond RaviliousDulwich Picture Gallery, London, November 19-May 26, 2025