Private
Collection
Collection
Celia Fiennes
(1902 - 1998)
Self Portrait, c.1925
Private Collection
Celia Fiennes (1902 - 1998)
Signed
Pencil
Size:
Height – 25.5cm
Width – 20.4cm
Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, and Paul Liss. Portrait of an Artist. Liss Llewellyn, 2021, p.273.
This
exquisite self portrait probably dates to Fiennes time at the Central
School of Arts and Crafts, where she enrolled in 1924. Fiennes studied
under Noel Rooke, (whom she married in 1932) – together they made a
major contribution to the revival of wood engraving in Britain in the
twentieth century.
Fiennes was the last survivor of the group of
engravers chosen by Robert Gibbings to illustrated Golden Cockerel
Press books between the wars. For him she illustrated Aesop’s Fables, 1926, and would have added Nicholas Breton’s Twelve Months, but meningitis meant that Eric Ravilious had to do it.
Fiennes also with the Arts and
Crafts Exhibition Society, organising exhibitions. Her absorption into the Arts and Crafts movement was deepened when
she moved into the Rooke family home in Bedford Park, for several years
living with her father-in-law Thomas Matthews Rooke, who had been
associated with Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John Ruskin.
Above image; Celia Fiennes marrying Noel Rooke, 1932
Wood engraver and painter, a direct descendant of Celia Fiennes the seventeenth-century traveller. She was the last survivor of the group of engravers chosen by Robert Gibbings to illustrated Golden Cockerel Press books between the wars.
For him she illustrated Aesop’s Fables, 1926, and would have added Nicholas Breton’s Twelve Months, but meningitis meant that Eric Ravilious had to do it.
Celia, also known as Molly, Fiennes studied with Noel Rooke at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1924; he found her work with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, organising exhibitions; and she married him in 1932.
Rooke produced some sensitive studies of his much younger wife. Her absorption into the Arts and Crafts movement was deepened when she moved into the Rooke family home in Bedford Park, for several years living with her father-in-law Thomas Matthews Rooke, who had been associated with Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and John Ruskin.
In 1960 Celia moved to Culworth, Oxfordshire, where she resumed her own work, occasionally acting as a guide for the family seat, Broughton Castle, Banbury.
With thanks to artbiogs.co.uk