Overview

'The best of these Darwins is that they are cut out of rock - three taps is enough to convince one how immense is their solidarity.' So wrote Virginia Woolf affectionately of Gwen Raverat, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin. In this first full biography, Frances Spalding looks beyond the artist Gwen Raverat's childhood memoir; Period Piece, and creates a fascinating and moving portrait of Charles Darwin's granddaughter. She explores her Darwin inheritance; her conflicts when she moves beyond her home environment to enter the Slade School of Art; her encounter with post-Impressionism; and her friendships with Stanley Spencer, Rupert Brooke and members of the Bloomsbury set. At each stage, Gwen's artistic creativity is interwoven with her relationships and circumstances. She helps revive the medium of wood-engraving and with her husband, Jacques Raverat, celebrates the South of France in the art they produce while living in Venice. Drawing on a huge cache of unpublished papers, Spalding brings us a life lived with bravery, humour; realism and integrity, surrounded by a remarkable cast of relatives, friends and associates.

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9781845952501

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Reviews

Fine study of Darwin's grand-daughter and her role in the Bloomsbury movement * Observer * Moving biography * Sunday Telegraph * This stylishly produced biography is an objet d'art in its own right, while Spalding's prose adopts the economy of the illustrations: austere, pragmatic and wholly devoid of ostentation * Guardian * A sympathetic, fastidious and beautifully produced biography...a fascinating portrait of an unusual woman...exquisite -- Robert McCrum * Observer *

Author Information

Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and biographer. Her books include acclaimed biographies of the painters Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and Stevie Smith. She has written a history of the Tate Gallery and was the editor of Charleston magazine. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art.

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