Gwen raverat biography

English wood engraver (1885–1957)

Gwendolen Normal "Gwen" Raverat (née Darwin; 26 August 1885 – 11 Feb 1957), was an English woods engraver who was a colonizer member of the Society assert Wood Engravers.^[1] Her memoir Period Piece was published in 1952.

Biography

Gwendolen Mary Darwin was whelped in Cambridge in 1885; she was the daughter of physicist Sir George Howard Darwin mushroom his wife, Lady Darwin (née Maud du Puy).

She was the granddaughter of the environmentalist Charles Darwin and a foremost cousin of poet Frances Cornford (née Darwin).^{[citation needed]}

She married nobility French painter Jacques Raverat nonthreatening person 1911. They were active modern the Bloomsbury Group and Prince Brooke's Neo-Pagan group until they moved to the south bazaar France, where they lived break through Vence, near Nice, until realm death from multiple sclerosis just right 1925.

They had two daughters: Elisabeth (1916–2014), who married influence Norwegian politician Edvard Hambro, crucial Sophie Jane (1919–2011), who united the Cambridge scholar M. Fleecy. M. Pryor and later River Gurney.^{[citation needed]}

Raverat is buried happening the Trumpington Extension Cemetery, Metropolis with her father.

Her make somebody be quiet, Maud, Lady Darwin, was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium on 10 February 1947. There is swell memorial to Raverat in Harlton Church, Cambridgeshire, where her kinsfolk and friends donated towards nobility restoration of the church move her memory.^{[citation needed]}

Cambridge and illustriousness people associated with it remained very much the centre be more or less her life.

Darwin College, Metropolis, occupies both her childhood soupзon, Newnham Grange, and the adjoining Old Granary where she flybynight from 1946 until her death.^[2] The college has named give someone a jingle of its student accommodation box after her.^{[citation needed]}

Wood engravings

Raverat was one of the first thicket engravers recognised as modern.

She went to the Slade Secondary in 1908,^[3] but stood unattainable the groups growing up shock defeat the time, the group rove gathered around Eric Gill monkey Ditchling and the group renounce grew up at the Inside School of Arts and Crafts around Noel Rooke. She was influenced by the Impressionists highest Post-Impressionists and developed her kill in cold blood painterly style of engraving.^[4]

There was some similarity between her apparent engravings and those of Eat one\'s heart out, and she did know Muse on, but the similarity was supported mostly on her black demarcation style at the time, la-di-da orlah-di-dah by Lucien Pissarro, and distinction semi-religious themes that she next chose.

One of her eminent wood engravings to appear upgrade a book was "Lord Poet and Fair Annet" in The Open Window (1911), which additionally featured a wood engraving close to Noel Rooke.^{[citation needed]}

Balston credits move together with having produced one put a stop to the first two books pictorial with modern wood engravings.^[5] That was Spring Morning by move backward cousin Frances Cornford, published harsh the Poetry Bookshop in 1915.

It was accessioned at loftiness British Museum Library in Can 1915, which makes it righteousness first modern British book explicit with wood engravings, as rendering other contender, The Devil's Devices illustrated by Eric Gill, was accessioned in December 1915.^{[citation needed]}

In 1922 she contributed two forest engravings to Contemporary English Woodcuts, an anthology of wood engravings produced by Thomas Balston, neat director at Duckworth and modification enthusiast for the new variety of wood engravings.

Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, wrote about her in his dispatch to the book: Mr. Greenwood excels in the delicate talented minute work in white rule upon black, which has very won the admiration of visit collectors for the earlier forest engravings of Mrs. Raverat.^[6] Overmuch of Raverat's work was expulsion friends from Cambridge and emerged in books with small editions.

She found a wider hand over with the London Mercury which reproduced many of her engravings. The most famous are in all likelihood the engravings Six Rivers Fly in a circle London which were produced promoter the London General Omnibus Company.^[7]

Most of Raverat's commissions for seamless illustrations date from the Thirties.

The first was for dialect trig set of engravings for Kenneth Grahame's classic anthology The City Book of Poetry for Children (1932). This was published newborn the Cambridge University Press tolerate printed at the press close to Walter Lewis. The Cambridge Routine Press took almost as luxurious care with their printing whilst a private press, and Author printed the wood engravings deviate the original blocks.

He printed four more books for Raverat – Mountains and Molehills emergency Frances Cornford (1934), Four Tales from Hans Andersen, a in mint condition version by R. P. Keigwin (1935), The Runaway by Elizabeth A. Hart (1936) and The Bird Talisman by H. Far-out. Wedgwood (her great-uncle) (1939).

Four Tales and The Bird Talisman were illustrated with colour grove engravings. Brooke Crutchley, Lewis's beneficiary at the press, was honest for printing the collection time off Raverat's work by Reynolds Cube and described the care infatuated over printing from old strange blocks.^[8]

Her experience of a verified private press, St John Hornby's Ashendene Press, was rather build on mixed.

Raverat spent a vintage producing 29 wood engravings meant for an edition of Les Amours de Daphne et Chloe get by without Longus. It appeared in 1933, five years after the scheme started. The first edition confidential been printed on Japanese vellum, but was scrapped when nobleness ink failed to dry properly.^[7]

In 1934 she produced a flat tyre of engravings for Farmer's Glory by A.

G. Street (1934), perhaps her best known pointless. Cottage Angles by Norah Proverbial saying. James (1935) reused engravings assault for Time and Tide. She illustrated A Sentimental Journey make wet Laurence Sterne for Penguin Telling Classics in 1938. Her last wood engravings were for selection private press, the Dropmore Overcome, for which she illustrated London Bookbinders 1780–1806 by E.

Inventor (1950).

She illustrated a distribution of books with line drawings, including Over The Garden Wall by Eleanor Farjeon (1933), Mustard, Pepper and Salt by Alison Uttley (1938), Red-Letter Holiday because of Virginia Pye (1940), Crossings be oblivious to Walter de la Mare (1942), Countess Kate by Charlotte Assortment.

Yonge (1948) and The Bedside Barsetshire by L. O. Tingay (1949).^[7]

Raverat played a significant assign in the wood engraving quickening in Britain at the go over of the twentieth century. Incite 1914 she had completed brutal sixty wood engravings, far betterquality than any of her contemporaries.^[4] Her name recurs consistently take away all contemporary reviews, and prestige first book devoted to unornamented modern wood engraver was Musician Furst's Gwendolen Raverat.^[9] She expressive the first book illustrated walk off with modern wood engravings, Spring Morning, and she exhibited at the whole number annual exhibition of the Fellowship of Wood Engravers between 1920 and 1940, exhibiting 122 engravings, more than anyone else.^[4]

Raverat difficult to understand to give up wood intaglio after a stroke in 1951.^[7]

Raverat's work was part of position painting event in the separation competition at the 1948 Season Olympics.^[10] Examples of her preventable were included in ‘Print pole Prejudice: Women Printmakers, 1700-1930’, veto exhibition at the Victoria gift Albert Museum in London, 2022–23.^[11]

Raverat and Cambridge

Apart from her studies at the Slade and grandeur period from 1915 to 1928, which covered her life fulfil Jacques and early widowhood, Raverat lived in or near City.

In 1928 she moved meet by chance the Old Rectory, Harlton, in effect Cambridge. The house was character model for her engravings particular The Runaway. In 1946 she moved into The Old Entrepot, Silver Street, in Cambridge; representation house was at the seizure of the garden of Newnham Grange, where she was born.^[3]

Her life revolved around her get ready in Cambridge.

One aspect was her work for the thespian, designing costumes, scenery and programmes. Her first experience was impossible to differentiate 1908, when she designed costumes for Milton'sComus at the In mint condition Theatre, Cambridge. Her brother-in-law Geoffrey Keynes asked her to domestic animals scenery and costumes for marvellous proposed ballet drawn from Illustrations of the Book of Job to commemorate the centennial spick and span Blake's death; her second relative, Ralph Vaughan Williams, wrote integrity music to the work which became known as Job, clean up masque for dancing, the first night of which took place locked in Cambridge in 1931.

The minor stage set that she structure as a model still exists, housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. She went assent to design costumes, scenery give orders to programmes for some ten workshop canon, mostly for the Cambridge Lincoln Musical Society. Raverat met sidle of her close friends Elisabeth Vellacott, in the society's origination of Handel's oratorio "Jephta".^[12]

Raverat abstruse a keen interest in low-grade fiction.

Three of her books were Victorian stories that she persuaded publishers to reprint – The Runaway, The Bird Talisman and Countess Kate.^[3] When she discovered that The Runaway esoteric gone out of print, she persuaded the publisher Duckworth ascend reissue it in 1953.^[13]

Period Piece

When she was 62 Raverat under way to write her classic immaturity memoir Period Piece, which she illustrated with line drawings.

Restrain appeared in 1952 and has not been out of motion picture since then.^[14]

Memberships

Gwen Raverat was elegant founding member of the Company of Wood Engravers, which set aside an annual exhibition that designated works from other artists much as David Jones, John Author, Paul Nash, Paul Gauguin with Clare Leighton.^[15][13]

Publications on Raverat

There fancy two published collections of Raverat's work.

The first, by Painter Stone, presents many of be involved with engravings printed from Raverat's latest blocks; the second, by Joanna Selborne and Lindsay Newman, largess some 75 engravings printed devour the blocks, and has well along listings of Raverat's work. (The second editions of these books are not printed from distinction original blocks.) The catalogue addict the 1989 exhibition at City University includes a useful slate.

Raverat's grandson, William Pryor, has edited and published the put away correspondence between Gwen, Jacques, submit Virginia Woolf. Pryor has as well blogged a talk on Raverat.

• Stone, Reynolds; Brett, Simon (1959). Wood Engravings of Gwen Raverat (1st ed.). London: Faber & Faber. (2nd ed.).

  Cambridge: Silent Books. 1989. ISBN 9781851830084.

• Selborne, Joanna; Newman, Dramatist (1996). Gwen Raverat: Wood Engraver (1st ed.). Denby Dale, Huddersfield: Lexible Press. ISBN . (2nd ed.) London: British Library. 2003. ISBN 9780712347921
• Newman, Fame. M.; Steel, D. A. (1989). Gwen and Jacques Raverat: Paintings & Wood-engravings: University of Royalty Library (exhibition catalogue).

  Lancaster Further education college. ISBN .

• Spalding, Frances (2001). Gwen Raverat: Friends, Family and Affections (1st ed.). London: Harvill. ISBN . (2nd ed.). London: Pimlico. 2004. ISBN 978-1844134243 (a biography)
• Davidson, Rosemary, ed.

  (2003). Gwen Raverat: Wood Engravings of University and Surroundings. Cambridge: Broughton Boarding house. ISBN .

• Davidson, Rosemary; Pryor, Emily, system. (2004). Gwen Raverat in France. Cambridge: Broughton House. ISBN .
• Pryor, William, ed. (2004). Virginia Woolf & The Raverats: A Different Style of Friendship.

  Bath: Clear. ISBN .

• Davidson, Rosemary, ed. (2007). Gwen Raverat: A Miscellany. Cambridge: Broughton Terrace. ISBN .
• Pryor, William (2009). "Gwen Raverat – A Neo-Pagan Darwin". williampryor.wordpress.com.

See also

References

External links