About
The Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden celebrates one of the most significant artists' colonies in twentieth-century British art — the community of painters, illustrators, and designers who gathered around the north Essex village of Great Bardfield from the late 1930s and created work that defined a distinctly English vision of rural life, decorative art, and graphic design.
The gallery is the permanent home of the Great Bardfield artists' legacy. The colony began in the late 1930s when artists including Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious — friends since their student days at the Royal College of Art — settled in and around Great Bardfield, a picturesque village eight miles north-west of Saffron Walden. Their example attracted other artists, and by the 1950s the village hosted a remarkable concentration of creative talent. In 1954 and 1955, a group of twelve artists opened their homes as studios to the public in a pioneering open-studio event that attracted twelve thousand visitors — remarkable testimony to the public appetite for their work.
Edward Bawden (1903–1989) was the dominant figure of the colony. A draughtsman of extraordinary range, he worked in watercolour, wallpaper design, book illustration, linocut, poster design, and decorative painting — applying the same assured graphic intelligence to a Penguin book cover, a London Transport poster, and a large-scale mural. His watercolours of the Essex landscape combine topographical accuracy with a distinctive graphic wit that makes even the most familiar scene freshly observed.
Eric Ravilious (1903–1942), Bawden's closest friend and creative peer, worked primarily in watercolour and engraving, creating images of the English countryside, chalk downs, and coastal scenes that have become iconic representations of the pre-war England they commemorate. Ravilious was killed in 1942 when the aircraft in which he was flying on a war artist commission disappeared off Iceland — his early death intensified the nostalgic resonance of his landscapes. The Fry Art Gallery holds significant works by Ravilious alongside the broader colony collection.
The gallery runs a year-round programme of temporary exhibitions exploring the work of individual colony artists, the wider context of British mid-century design, and related themes. Its position in Saffron Walden — itself a town of considerable architectural character — makes a visit easily combined with the town's other attractions.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Combine your Fry Art Gallery visit with the adjacent Saffron Walden Museum for a full day of heritage — both are free and within a hundred metres of each other.
- Audley End House (English Heritage) is two miles to the west and is one of England's finest Jacobean houses — an excellent complement to the gallery for a full day in the Saffron Walden area.
- Make the short drive or cycle to Great Bardfield itself — the village where the colony was based retains the character that attracted Bawden and Ravilious in the late 1930s.
- The gallery shop is excellent for art publications — the literature on Bawden and Ravilious has grown substantially in recent years and the gallery carries a curated selection.
- Check the temporary exhibitions programme before visiting — the Fry mounts high-quality exhibitions that often include loans from national collections and from private owners.
- Audley End station (National Rail, served by Greater Anglia from Liverpool Street) is two miles from Saffron Walden; a taxi or bicycle makes the connection practical.
- Saffron Walden itself is one of the best-preserved small market towns in Essex with a medieval maze, an interesting ruined castle, and good independent shops and cafés.
- Photography is permitted in the gallery — Bawden's graphic work and the decorative arts collections photograph particularly well.
Highlights
Edward Bawden Collection
The gallery holds a major collection of works by Edward Bawden (1903–1989), one of the most versatile British artists of the twentieth century.
Bawden's output encompassed watercolour painting, book illustration, poster design, wallpaper, ceramics, and large-scale mural work, applied across all these mediums with a consistency of graphic wit and assured draughtsmanship that makes his work immediately recognisable. The Fry holds watercolours, linocuts, posters, and design work spanning his long career, from his early Essex landscapes to his later travels in Africa and the Middle East.
Eric Ravilious
Eric Ravilious (1903–1942) is represented in the Fry collection with works that encapsulate his distinctive vision of the English landscape. Working primarily in watercolour and wood-engraving, Ravilious created images of chalk downlands, seaside scenes, and rural interiors whose clarity and melancholy have made them defining images of England between the wars.
His early death in 1942 — when his aircraft disappeared off Iceland during a war artist mission — gave his work a poignant retrospective quality, and his reputation has grown steadily in recent decades.
The gallery is one of the finest places to encounter his work.
The Great Bardfield Artists' Colony
The gallery's collection extends beyond Bawden and Ravilious to encompass the wider community of artists who made Great Bardfield their home from the late 1930s to the 1960s.
Michael Rothenstein's bold printmaking, Sheila Robinson's illustrations, Kenneth Rowntree's paintings, and the work of Bernard Cheese, John Aldridge, Stanley Clifford-Smith, and others are all represented. The colony's collective achievement was to sustain a distinctly English tradition of decorative art and illustration during a period when Continental modernism dominated critical discussion.
Decorative Arts and Design
The Great Bardfield artists were as significant in applied and decorative design as in fine art. Bawden designed wallpapers for Cole and Son (still in production), ceramics for Wedgwood, and murals for restaurants and public buildings. Ravilious designed the 'Afternoon Tea' and 'Garden' patterns for Wedgwood.
The gallery's collection includes examples of this design work alongside the fine art, demonstrating the artists' fluency across the boundaries between fine art, craft, and commercial design that characterised the best mid-century British designers.
Collections
The Fry Art Gallery holds over three thousand works relating to the Great Bardfield artists' colony and its associated figures, making it the most comprehensive collection of this significant chapter in mid-twentieth-century British art. The Bawden holdings are particularly extensive, covering his work across watercolour, linocut, poster design, book illustration, and ceramics from the 1920s to the 1980s.
The Ravilious collection includes watercolours, wood-engravings, and design work that represent the full range of his achievement before his death in 1942.
Works by Michael Rothenstein, Sheila Robinson, Kenneth Rowntree, John Aldridge, and other colony members complement the two central figures. The collection also includes archival material — correspondence, photographs, and studio records — that documents the life and working methods of the colony.
Bawden, Ravilious and the Great Bardfield Artists
A permanent survey of the colony's achievement, from the founding generation to the final open studio in 1955.
📍 Permanent Collection Galleries
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.