Elizabeth Rivers
, English, 1903-1964
Title
Star in the EastDatec.1960
MediumWood engraving in blue ink on paper
Dimensions
18 x 12 cm
Credit LinePresented, Penny Salholm, 2011
Object numberNGI.2011.10
DescriptionElizabeth Rivers trained at Goldsmiths College and the Royal Academy Schools in London. Her printmaking was much influenced by Noel Rooke, who pioneered the ‘white line’ style of wood engraving in Britain. In the early 1930s Rivers was associated with the avant-garde ‘Twenties Group’ led by Lucy Wertheim, which also included Basil Rákóczi, Victor Pasmore and Norah McGuinness. Following a period of study in Paris in 1935, she travelled to the Aran Islands, remaining there until 1943 when she returned to London to serve as a fire warden. In 1939 her series of Modernist wood engravings, 'This Man', was published, but the blocks and most of the prints were destroyed in the Blitz in 1940. After the war Rivers returned to Ireland, writing her memoir 'A Stranger in Aran', which was the first book to be published by the Cuala Press in 1946. Throughout the 1940s and 50s she worked in watercolours, oils, stained-glass and print. She was a founder member of the Graphic Studio Workshop in 1961. Religion played an increasingly important role in her life and work and in 1956 she converted to Catholicism. This spare, semi-abstract rendering of a familiar Christian theme is typical of her work published by the Dolmen Press in the 1950s.
Inscriptionon verso (letterpress text): Wood engraving by Elizabeth Rivers/ the Dolmen Press, Dublin, Ireland 603