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Timeline of Gwen Raverat's Life

By William  |  23 Jul 2020 16:00:00

1885            Gwendolen Mary Darwin born at Newnham Grange in Cambridge, the eldest child of George, son of Charles Darwin, and Maud (nee Du Puy) from Philadelphia.

1886-1891    Early childhood spent largely in the company of the Darwin tribe of cousins who lived in nearby large houses – Wychfield, The Grove and The Orchard. Learns to play the piano and later the flute. Lessons in                        reading, writing, poetry, geometry and arithmetic from her mother. Throughout her childhood visits Down House, her grandfather Charles Darwin’s home in Kent – he died 3 years before she was born.

1892            French governess in summer vacation. Starts drawing lessons with Miss Green.

1894            Visits cousins in America – her mother was from Philadelphia.

1898            Accompanies her father to Geodetic Congress in Stuttgart, visits Heidelberg and Amsterdam to see Rembrandt exhibition – “Rembrandt became my God”.

1899-1901    Studies French, German, Latin, English Literature and Physics with various tutors. Discovers the work of the father of modern wood engraving, Thomas Bewick.

1902-1904    Attends Levana, a small private boarding school at Wimbledon Park. Accompanies her father to a conference in Copenhagen, visits Sweden. Cambridge again - music lessons, drawing classes, life classes, first                        attempts at painting.

1905            Visits Switzerland to keep her cousin Frances company at her ‘rest home’. Stops in Paris to visit the Louvre, the Tuileries and Notre Dame.

1906            Accompanies her father to a conference in Budapest, visiting Prague and Vienna. Goes to a small private art school in London. Meets the Stephen family (Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia and Adrian) and other                                 members of the Bloomsbury Group. Attends a woman’s suffrage meeting in London.

1907            Another spell at a private art school. Visits Frances in Switzerland. Sees the Marlowe Society’s production of Doctor Faustus.

1908            Meets Rupert Brooke and Jacques Raverat when casting, designing and making costumes with her cousin and best friend Frances for the Marlowe Society’s production of Milton’s Comus. Enters Slade school of                     Painting and Drawing in London. She is taught drawing by Henry Tonks, painting by Philip Wilson Steer, art history by Roger Fry. Becomes friends with fellow students Mark Gertler and Stanley Spencer.                               Introduced to wood-engraving by her cousin Bernard Darwin’s new wife, the Irish artist Eily Monsell.

1909            Begins to see more of the Stephens (Virginia and Vanessa) in London. Visits Augustus John and entourage at Grantchester. Jacques Raverat is now back in Cambridge and in love with Rupert’s friend Ka Cox.                        Gwen cuts 20 wood engravings in the year, her first an illustration to the ballad The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

1910            Jacques enrols at the Slade, becomes close to Gwen who visits Holland and Paris with Ka Cox. Meets with Jacques, who takes them to his father’s chateau at Prunoy. Back in London, she paints and cuts a                           series of small wood engravings, exhibits at a Friday Club exhibition. Good reviews. Sells seven prints. Visits Roger Fry’s Manet and the Post-Impressionists exhibition. Rupert’s group of friends - Jacques, Ka,                             Frances and Gwen – are dubbed the Neo-Pagans by Virginia Woolf. Gwen cuts 14 wood engravings this year, including the striking Flying.

1911            The first publication of one of Gwen’s wood engravings is Clerk Saunders in the ballad broadsheet Sweet William’s Ghost published by W. Heffer & Sons Ltd. Rejected by Ka Cox, Jacques proposes marriage to                         Gwen. She accepts. Her parents throw a reception for 350 at Newnham Grange a week before their registry office wedding in London. The Bloomsbury Group, the Neopagans, cousin Ralph Vaughan Williams                     and others celebrate with a fancy-dress supper party on the Newnham Grange lawn. Gwen & Jacques go on a painting honeymoon at West Lulworth in Dorset. Later they go to Jacques’ father’s chateau at                           Prunoy. They go to the Decades at Pontigny – a meeting of philosophers and poets including André Gide. Gwen and Jacques establish their first English home in 6 St Paul’s Studios in Hammersmith, London.                           Just two wood-engravings this year.

1912            The Women’s Hospital for Children commission Gwen to cut a bookplate. Gwen goes with Jacques to the alps so he can climb. They summer at Prunoy and return to Newnham Grange - Gwen's father is ill                        with cancer. They rent Manor Farm at Croydon, 15 miles from Cambridge. Second Post-Impressionist exhibition is launched by Roger Fry in London. To help his cash flow Gwen buys Stanley Spencer's John                          Donne arriving in Heaven. Gwen cuts 10 wood engravings of folkloric subjects in the year, some originating from drawings by Jacques and influenced by their friend Eric Gill. Gwen’s painting The Visitation is                              accepted for a Friday Club exhibition in London. Sir George Darwin, Gwen’s father, dies from cancer in December aged 67. Gwen cuts ten wood-engravings in the year.

1913            Large oil painting of The Visitation, now entitled Two Women, is accepted for New English Art Club exhibition. Six wood engravings cut this year.

1914            Two wood engraving prints accepted by the New English Art Club. Travels with Jacques to Italy: Padua, Ravenna, Florence (with André Gide), Arezzo, San Sepolcro, Gubbio, Assisi. Gwen moves out of Manor                       Farm, joins Jacques in France. His illness is diagnosed as multiple sclerosis when he tries to enlist in French army. Seven wood-engravings including The Prodigal Son which was drawn by Jacques.

1915            Return to Newnham Grange, holiday in Cornwall. Work on wood engravings to illustrate Frances Cornford's poetry collection Spring Morning. They move into Conduit Head (the Cornfords’ house). Death of                     Rupert Brooke devastates Gwen and Jacques. They paint a fresco Mediterranean Landscape in Conduit Head (resembling the island of Skyros where Rupert Brooke died). They move to Darnall’s Hall, Weston                       in Hertfordshire. 14 prints cut in the year.

1916            Elisabeth Jacqueline Raverat born to Gwen and Jacques at Newnham Grange. Back at Weston Gwen concentrates on looking after the baby and growing vegetables. Jacques spends all the time his health allows                     painting. Gide visits them. Both Gwen and Jacques have paintings in New English Art Club exhibition; increasingly her wood engravings attracting critical attention. Three prints cut this year.

1918            Sophie Jane Raverat born to Gwen and Jacques at Newnham Grange. Two prints.

1919            Gwen exhibited 92 prints at Herbert Furst's Little Art Rooms in London and later 30 paintings and prints in the Cambridge Magazine Shop. Monograph on her work by Herbert Furst (including 14 prints)                              published in Modern Woodcutters. Gwen is recognised as central to the revival of wood engraving. 12 wood-engravings cut.

1920            Gwen is one of the founder members of the Society of Wood-Engravers. She shows ten prints in their opening exhibition and then regularly at SWE annual exhibitions. Darnall's Hall sub-let, Jacques, Gwen and                       children set off for France: first to Escures (where Jacques’ father now lived) and then to Vence, 1,000 feet up, six miles from the Mediterranean. It is an “earthly paradise” for Gwen and a perfect place to paint                     for Jacques in between MS relapses. They first live in the Nouvel Hotel on the main square where they make contact with the ex-patriate and French community of artists and writers. They call on Matisse in                       Nice. Then set up home in the Villa Adele. Acquire a motor car. Gwen copes with the household and children whilst looking after an increasingly helpless Jacques as she also is at her most productive with                           wood-engraving using the life of the streets as her subjects. The painter Jean Marchand becomes a good friend. Vanessa Bell visits. Seven new images cut.

1921            Gwen and Elisabeth visit England to close Darnall’s Hall. 3 new wood-engravings.

1922            Correspondence between Jacques, Gwen and Virginia Woolf flourishes. Ten blocks cut; the most striking Jeu de Boules set in the main square of Vence.

1923            Babette Giroux joins the family as nanny, but also helps with Jacques. The Cornfords visit. Jacques’ health continues to deteriorate. Eight blocks cut including La Ville en Eté of the main square in Vence.

1924            Gwen and Elisabeth get measles, go with Sophie to Alps to recuperate. Gwen visits England to see Aunt Etty. Jacques in great pain and on morphine. Gwen returns to Vence. She draws Jacques. She makes 4                         wood-engravings.

1925            Jacques dies on 6th March. Gwen and her brother Charles holiday in Italy. Virginia Woolf’s last letter to Jacques comes to be rated one of the best letters ever written. Gwen has brief affair with Jean                                   Marchand. Babette looks after the children at the Villa Adele and later in England on holiday in Norfolk. Gwen suffers a breakdown. On a visit to Ireland Babette dies after a mysterious operation. Gwen stays                       with her mother at Newnham Grange, then finds a small house to rent in London off Mecklenburgh Square. Gwen cuts 5 images in the year, including two portraits of Jacques.

1926-1927    Gwen re-invents herself in London. Teaches art in a school one day a week. She exhibits with the London Group, the Redfern Gallery, the Cambridge Drawing Society and St George's Gallery, London. Her                          work begins to appear in magazines and collections. Virginia Woolf introduces Gwen to Lady Rhonda, editor of Time and Tide Magazine, which commissions a monthly art-criticism column from Gwen plus                            half-page pen & ink drawings. She gets to know Naomi Mitchison, Rebecca West, Rose Macaulay and Winifred Holtby. Gwen cutes 13 images in the period.

1928            Moves back to Cambridgeshire, renting the Old Rectory in Harlton, a spacious house and garden. Sophie and Elisabeth go daily to Perse School in Cambridge. Family network of Cornfords, Barlows,                                   Wedgwoods, Ralph Vaughan Williams, her mother Lady Darwin (still living at Newnham Grange), Keynes’s, Toynbees and assorted children and teenagers provide company and diversion. Gwen cuts 5 images                       in the year and starts work on the 30 wood-engraving illustrations she is commissioned to make for Daphnis and Chloé that is published by St John Hornby’s Ashendene Press (He was the owner of WH Smith)                     in 1931. Gwen’s brother -in-law, the surgeon and scholar Geoffrey Keynes, brought the choreographer Ninette de Valois together with their composer cousin Ralph Vaughan Williams to create the ballet Job, A                     Masque for Dancing for which Gwen designed the costumes and sets. It was first performed in 1931.

1929            Gwen is commissioned to make six images, Little Rivers of London’s Country, for newspaper ads for the London General Omnibus Company. Her work begins appearing in the London Mercury magazine.

1930            Among the 18 blocks she cuts this year are the images she makes for each of the calendar months published in Time & Tide. Also her first celebrations of English agriculture: The Threshing Machine and Cows                         Drinking.

1931            Gwen completes the last of the 30 illustrations for Daphnis & Chloé while also cutting illustrations for an Hans Andersen story and illustrations for two short stories she writes: Georgette and An Image of the                         Truth. First performance of Job. Five wood-engravings cut in the year.

1932            In her largest commission yet, Gwen cuts 55 small illustrations for the Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children. Among the six other blocks she cuts is Cambridge, an almost Escheresque image for the poster for                       the 57^th exhibition of the Cambridge Drawing Society.

1933            A most productive year. On the back of her designs for Job, she gets more design work for theatre.  She provides illustrations for poems by W.H. Auden published as a supplement to the BBC’s Listener                               magazine. Gwen arrives at her calling, book illustration, when she is commissioned to provide 35 wood-engraving illustrations for A.G. Street’s classic Farmer’s Glory. Gwen also provides drawings for Eleanor                         Farjeon’s Over the Garden Wall. She cuts 47 images in total in the year.

1934            Gwen makes wood-engraving illustrations for Mountains and Molehills, an anthology of poems by her cousin Frances Cornford.  She also provides art and book reviews for Time and Tide. 

1935            Gwen draws illustrations for Cottage Angles by Norah C James and H.R. Jukes’s Loved River as well as wood-engravings for R.P. Keigwin’s new translation of Four Tales from Hans Andersen.

1936            Five books with Gwen’s illustrations, notably The Runaway and The Frogs of Aristophanes. Gwen’s brother Charles Gaulton Darwin becomes Master of Christ’s College, Cambridge.

1937            John Evelyn published by Geoffrey Keynes with Gwen’s illustration. Her wood-engraving is on title page of The Old Century, a collection of poems by Siegfried Sassoon. A first for Gwen and the art of wood-                           engraving: she provides 12 wood-engravings for a new Penguin paperback of A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Stern.

1938            Commissioned by Farmers Weekly magazine (Farmer’s Glory author A. G. Street was a columnist), Gwen travels by train across Germany and Russia (in 1938!) to Persia with Cecil Edwards the pioneer dealer                         in Persian rugs. Gwen’s articles and drawings appear later in the magazine. Gwen cuts five blocks, including an illustration for Marlowe Society programme for their production of King Lear.

1939            Gwen cuts seven stand-alone wood-engravings as well as the fifty-four she cuts for The Bird Talisman, a children’s story by her great uncle Henry Wedgwood.

1940            Elisabeth marries Norwegian diplomat Eddi Hambro. Sophie marries academic Mark Pryor in Trinity College Chapel. Gwen works as factory hand in her Uncle Horace's Cambridge Instrument Factory. Gwen                       makes a colour print for the dust jacket of the novel The Bird in the Tree.

1941-1945    Gwen works at the Scott Polar Research Institute on Admiralty Handbooks for the Naval Intelligence Division, putting ordnance survey maps into perspective drawings. Leaves the Old Rectory and takes                              rooms in Conduit Head Road, near the Cornfords. She makes no wood-engravings until the end of the war.

1946            Moved into the Old Granary (part of Newnham Grange) with Nan McMonagle as housekeeper. Gwen cuts Escures, an unusual image of Jacques’ father’s house in Escures France.

1947            Gwen's mother, Lady Maud Darwin, dies. Gwen gets idea for Period Piece when clearing her mother’s 60 years of possessions and papers. Her brother Charles, now Master of Christ’s College, moves into                            Newnham Grange. Gwen is commissioned by Faber and Faber to illustrate republished Countess Kate by Charlotte Yonge and later The Bedside Barsetshire, an anthology of Anthony Trollope’s writings.

1948-1951    Gwen has many visitors at the Old Granary: family, artists, young people, sometimes student lodgers. Elisabeth’s schoolgirl daughter, Anne, lives with her for three years. Richard de la Mare at Faber & Faber                        encourages Gwen’s ideas for the book that became Period Piece. She has the text and most of the drawings finished by the autumn of 1951 when she suffers a bad stroke, leaving her paralysed on the left.

1952            Period Piece, subtitled A Cambridge Childhood, is published by Faber & Faber. It gains rave reviews and has been in print in various editions and translations for the ensuing 68 years.

1953-1957    The stroke doesn’t stop Gwen becoming a cultural icon in Cambridge. Students, family and friends gather around her. She is a regular at the Arts Theatre and Cinema and carries on painting along the Backs                          and on Lammas Land.  She sits for a portrait by Elisabeth Vellacott that is displayed to this day in Kettle’s Yard. Gwen's seventieth birthday party at Newnham Grange. Increasingly paralysed she dies at the Old                      Granary after taking an overdose. Her note for the family: “…this seems the simplest plan for everyone. I’ve planned it for a long time. Thank you and everyone else for your boundless kindness to me.” She                       was buried in the same grave as her parents.