‘He died in his 30s living the life he had dreamed of’: artist Eric Ravilious | Film
On 2 September 1942, a plane on a search-and-rescue mission off the coast of Iceland crashed into the sea, killing its pilot and 39-year-old passenger. The passenger was Eric Ravilious, whose final letter to his wife, three days earlier, had extolled the deep shadows and leaflike cracks of the subarctic landscape. He was one of 300 artists hired by the War Artists Advisory Committee to cover the second world war, and the first to die on active service.Back home in their dank Essex farmhouse where she was marooned with…