Gwenda Morgan

Gwenda Morgan
Born	1st February 1908 Petworth, West Sussex, England
Died	1991 Petworth, West Sussex
Nationality	British
Education	Goldsmiths' College of Art Grosvenor School of Modern Art
Known for	wood engraving

Gwenda Morgan (1 February 1908 – 1991) was a British wood engraver. She lived in town of Petworth, West Sussex.

Morgan was born in Petworth, her father having moved there to work at the ironmongers Austens, of which he later became the proprietor. He was the son of military farrier who was born in Wales.

Following school in Petworth and at Brighton and Hove High School, Morgan studied at Goldsmiths' College of Art in London, from 1926. From 1930 she attended the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Pimlico where she was taught and strongly influenced by the principal, Iain Macnab.

The Grosvenor School was a progressive art school, and the championing of wood engraving and linocuts fitted with its democratic approach to the arts.

Morgan was commissioned to illustrate a number of books published by private presses. For the Samson Press she produced the frontispiece for Duke Hamilton's Wager in 1934 and Pictures and Rhymes in 1936. She illustrated four books for the Golden Cockerel Press, including Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1946) and Grimms' Other Tales (1956).

The main body of her work drew upon the landscape and buildings around Petworth and the neighbouring South Downs. Her work was inspired by that of Macnab, Percy Douglas Bliss and the Sussex-bred Eric Ravilious.

Throughout the Second World War she worked as a Land Girl just outside Petworth. Her record of those years was published by the Whittington Press in 2002 as The Diary of a Land Girl, 1939-1945.

...
Wikipedia