Gwendolen Raverat

The Princess & the Swans (from 'The Bird Talisman')

About this artwork

Gwendolen Raverat trained as a painter and taught herself to engrave in wood. As a girl, she idolised the wood engraver Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) and wished she could have been his wife, so that he might ‘just sometimes, let me draw and engrave a little tailpiece for him’. Raverat’s robust style is related to the fact that she often worked in woodcut as well as wood engraving, though always on a small scale. This tiny image is loaded with the significance of the story it illustrates, of a princess with a ring that allows her to talk to birds

Published November 2023

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Gwendolen Raverat

Gwendolen Raverat