Gwen Raverat
Encyclopedia
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
wood engraving
Wood engraving
Wood engraving is a technique in printmaking where the "matrix" worked by the artist is a block of wood. It is a variety of woodcut and so a relief printing technique, where ink is applied to the face of the block and printed by using relatively low pressure. A normal engraving, like an etching,...
artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
who co-founded the Society of Wood Engravers
Society of Wood Engravers
The Society of Wood Engravers was co-founded in 1920 by British wood engraving artist Gwendoline Raverat, wife of French painter Jacques Raverat.The Society was revived in 1984 by Hilary Paynter. It publishes a bulletin called Multiples....
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Biography
Gwen Darwin was born in CambridgeCambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, in 1885, the daughter of George Howard Darwin and his wife Maud du Puy. She was the granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
and the first cousin of poet Frances Cornford
Frances Cornford
Frances Crofts Cornford was an English poet.She was the daughter of the botanist Francis Darwin and Ellen Crofts, born into the Darwin — Wedgwood family. She was a granddaughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin. Her elder half-brother was the golf writer Bernard Darwin...
. She married the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
Jacques Raverat
Jacques Raverat
Jacques Pierre Raverat was a French painter.He married the English painter Gwen Darwin, in 1911, the daughter of George Darwin and granddaughter of Charles Darwin. They had two daughters, Elisabeth , who married the Norwegian politician Edvard Hambro and Sophie who married the Cambridge scholar...
in 1911. They were active in the Bloomsbury Group
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
and Rupert Brooke
Rupert Brooke
Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier...
's Neo-Pagans until they moved to the south of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, where they lived in Vence
Vence
Vence is a commune set in the hills of the Alpes Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France between Nice and Antibes.-Population:-Sights:...
, near Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
, until his death from multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease in which the fatty myelin sheaths around the axons of the brain and spinal cord are damaged, leading to demyelination and scarring as well as a broad spectrum of signs and symptoms...
in 1925. They had two daughters: Elisabeth (born 1916), who married the Norwegian politician Edvard Hambro
Edvard Hambro
Edvard Isak Hambro was a Norwegian politician. He was the 25th President of the United Nations General Assembly and also served on the UN's International Law Commission from 1972 to 1977.- Biography :...
, and Sophie (born 1919), who married the Cambridge scholar Mark Pryor.
In 1927, Raverat's brother-in-law Geoffrey Keynes
Geoffrey Keynes
Sir Geoffrey Langdon Keynes was an English biographer, surgeon, physician, scholar and bibliophile...
asked her to provide scenic designs
Scenic design
Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...
for a proposed ballet drawn from William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
's Illustrations of the Book of Job
William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job
William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job primarily refers to a series of twenty-two engraved prints by Blake illustrating the biblical Book of Job. It also refers to two earlier sets of watercolours by Blake on the same subject...
to commemorate the centennial of Blake's death; her second cousin Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
wrote the music to the work which became known as Job, a masque for dancing
Job, a masque for dancing
Job is a one act ballet produced for the Vic-Wells Ballet in 1931. Regarded as a crucial work in the development of British ballet, Job was the first ballet to be produced by an entirely British creative team...
. The miniature stage set that she built as a model still exists, housed at the Fitzwilliam Museum
Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....
in Cambridge.
Eventually she settled back in Cambridge where, in 1952, she published her classic childhood memoir Period Piece
Period Piece (book)
Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood is an autobiographical work by Gwendoline Mary "Gwen" Raverat.Gwen Raverat was the daughter of George Howard Darwin and was an artist. She married the French artist Jacques Raverat in 1911 and had daughters Elizabeth Hambro and Sophie Pryor...
, which is still in print over 50 years later. In 2004 her grandson, William Pryor
William Pryor (writer)
William Marlborough Pryor is a British writer.Pryor was born in Farnborough in 1945, to Mark Gillachrist Marlborough Pryor, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Sophie , daughter of Jacques Raverat and his wife Gwen...
, edited and published the complete correspondence between Gwen, Jacques, and Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
under the title Virginia Woolf and the Raverats.
She illustrated a number of books with her distinctive line drawings and characteristic wood engravings, including Period Piece, and prints from her original wood blocks are much sought after today.
Darwin College, Cambridge
Darwin College, Cambridge
Darwin College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge.Founded in 1964, Darwin was Cambridge University's first graduate-only college, and also the first to admit both men and women. The college is named after the family of one of the university's most famous graduates, Charles Darwin...
, occupies both her childhood home and the neighbouring Old Granary where she lived for the last years of her life. The college has named one of its student accommodation houses after her.
Spring Morning – Frances Cornford (Poetry Bookshop, 1915)
The Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children (n.e.) – Kenneth Grahame (CUP 1932)
Over The Garden Wall – Eleanor Farjeon (Faber, 1933)
Les Amours de Daphne et Chloe – Longus (Ashendene, 1933)
Farmer’s Glory – A. G. Street (Faber, 1934)
Mountains and Molehills – Frances Cornford (CUP, 1934)
Cottage Angels – N. C. James (Dent, 1935)
A New Version of The First Four Tales from Hans Christian Andersen – R. P. Keigwin (CUP, 1935)
The Runaway – Elizabeth A. Hart (MacMillan, 1936)
Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne (Penguin Illustrated Classics, 1938)
Mustard, Pepper and Salt – Alison Uttley (Faber, 1938)
The Bird Talisman – H. A. Wedgwood (Faber, 1939)
Red-Letter Holiday – V. Pye (Faber, 1940)
Crossings – Walter De La Mare (Faber, 1942)
Countess Kate – C. M. Yonge (Faber, 1948)
The Bedside Barsetshire – L. O. Tingay (Faber, 1949)
The London Bookbinders 1780-1806 – E. Howe (Dropmore, 1950)
Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood (Autobiography) (1952)
External links
- Broughton House Gallery Archive - Accessed 26 August 2009