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Gwen Raverat
Gwendolen Mary "Gwen" Raverat (née Darwin; 26 August 1885 – 11 February 1957), was an English wood engraver who was a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers. Her memoir Period Piece was published in 1952.
Gwendolen Mary Darwin was born in Cambridge in 1885; she was the daughter of astronomer Sir George Howard Darwin and his wife, Lady Darwin (née Maud du Puy). She was the granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin and a first cousin of poet Frances Cornford (née Darwin).[citation needed]
She married the French painter Jacques Raverat in 1911. They were active in the Bloomsbury Group and Rupert Brooke's Neo-Pagan group until they moved to the south of France, where they lived in Vence, near Nice, until his death from multiple sclerosis in 1925. They had two daughters: Elisabeth (1916–2014), who married the Norwegian politician Edvard Hambro, and Sophie Jane (1919–2011), who married the Cambridge scholar M. G. M. Pryor and later Charles Gurney.[citation needed]
Raverat is buried in the Trumpington Extension Cemetery, Cambridge with her father. Her mother, Maud, Lady Darwin, was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium on 10 February 1947. There is a memorial to Raverat in Harlton Church, Cambridgeshire, where her family and friends donated towards the restoration of the church in her memory.[citation needed]
Cambridge and the people associated with it remained very much the centre of her life. Darwin College, Cambridge, occupies both her childhood home, Newnham Grange, and the neighbouring Old Granary where she lived from 1946 until her death. The college has named one of its student accommodation houses after her.[citation needed]
Raverat was one of the first wood engravers recognised as modern. She went to the Slade School in 1908, but stood outside the groups growing up at the time, the group that gathered around Eric Gill at Ditchling and the group that grew up at the Central School of Arts and Crafts around Noel Rooke. She was influenced by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and developed her own painterly style of engraving.
There was some similarity between her early engravings and those of Gill, and she did know Gill, but the similarity was based mostly on her black line style at the time, influenced by Lucien Pissarro, and the semi-religious themes that she then chose. One of her first wood engravings to appear in a book was "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet" in The Open Window (1911), which also featured a wood engraving by Noel Rooke.[citation needed]
Balston credits her with having produced one of the first two books illustrated with modern wood engravings. This was Spring Morning by her cousin Frances Cornford, published by the Poetry Bookshop in 1915. It was accessioned at the British Museum Library in May 1915, which makes it the first modern British book illustrated with wood engravings, as the other contender, The Devil's Devices illustrated by Eric Gill, was accessioned in December 1915.[citation needed]
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Gwen Raverat
Gwendolen Mary "Gwen" Raverat (née Darwin; 26 August 1885 – 11 February 1957), was an English wood engraver who was a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers. Her memoir Period Piece was published in 1952.
Gwendolen Mary Darwin was born in Cambridge in 1885; she was the daughter of astronomer Sir George Howard Darwin and his wife, Lady Darwin (née Maud du Puy). She was the granddaughter of the naturalist Charles Darwin and a first cousin of poet Frances Cornford (née Darwin).[citation needed]
She married the French painter Jacques Raverat in 1911. They were active in the Bloomsbury Group and Rupert Brooke's Neo-Pagan group until they moved to the south of France, where they lived in Vence, near Nice, until his death from multiple sclerosis in 1925. They had two daughters: Elisabeth (1916–2014), who married the Norwegian politician Edvard Hambro, and Sophie Jane (1919–2011), who married the Cambridge scholar M. G. M. Pryor and later Charles Gurney.[citation needed]
Raverat is buried in the Trumpington Extension Cemetery, Cambridge with her father. Her mother, Maud, Lady Darwin, was cremated at Cambridge Crematorium on 10 February 1947. There is a memorial to Raverat in Harlton Church, Cambridgeshire, where her family and friends donated towards the restoration of the church in her memory.[citation needed]
Cambridge and the people associated with it remained very much the centre of her life. Darwin College, Cambridge, occupies both her childhood home, Newnham Grange, and the neighbouring Old Granary where she lived from 1946 until her death. The college has named one of its student accommodation houses after her.[citation needed]
Raverat was one of the first wood engravers recognised as modern. She went to the Slade School in 1908, but stood outside the groups growing up at the time, the group that gathered around Eric Gill at Ditchling and the group that grew up at the Central School of Arts and Crafts around Noel Rooke. She was influenced by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and developed her own painterly style of engraving.
There was some similarity between her early engravings and those of Gill, and she did know Gill, but the similarity was based mostly on her black line style at the time, influenced by Lucien Pissarro, and the semi-religious themes that she then chose. One of her first wood engravings to appear in a book was "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet" in The Open Window (1911), which also featured a wood engraving by Noel Rooke.[citation needed]
Balston credits her with having produced one of the first two books illustrated with modern wood engravings. This was Spring Morning by her cousin Frances Cornford, published by the Poetry Bookshop in 1915. It was accessioned at the British Museum Library in May 1915, which makes it the first modern British book illustrated with wood engravings, as the other contender, The Devil's Devices illustrated by Eric Gill, was accessioned in December 1915.[citation needed]