Nora Fry Lavrin

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Nora Lavrin
Born1897
Liverpool School of Art
  • Académie de la Grande Chaumière
  • Royal College of Art
    • Known forEngraver, book illustrator, painter

    Nora Lavrin, née Fry (1897 – 30 August 1985), was an English engraver, book illustrator and painter. She illustrated twenty editions of children's books.

    Early life

    Nora Fry was born in Liverpool, the daughter of Canadian-born Ambrose Fry, an urban landlord and chemical manufacturer, and Lydia (Lily) Thompson, who was from the Shetland Isles. Nora's brother, architect Maxwell Fry, in his autobiography mentions their mother playing the piano and that she had painted.[1] She had an older sister Muriel Fry, and two younger brothers, Edwin Maxwell Fry and Sydney Fry.[2]

    Nora Lavrin studied arts with her sister Muriel at the

    Harrap. In 1927 she illustrated two more books, both of which ran to several editions. Her illustration of Aesop’s Fables (1927 and 1934) ran to eight editions between 1927 and 1989. She also illustrated A Treasure of Tales for Little Folks (1927) which ran several versions in the 1930s. In September 1927 she entered the Engraving School of the Royal College of Art, RCA, in Kensington where she specialized in engraving and etching under Robert Austin. Lavrin left the RCA in July 1928 having achieved her Certificate in Etching.[2]

    In July 1928 Nora Fry married

    University College of Nottingham as an art teacher. In the 1920s and 1930s she exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition; Liverpool Autumn Exhibition, Nottingham Society of Artists and galleries in England and, later in 1961, in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia.[citation needed
    ]

    World War II

    Land Girls unloading Flax, 1943, (Art.IWM ART LD 3587)

    During World War II the Lavrins were living in London. Janko Lavrin worked for the

    Women's Land Army and several of these pieces were purchased by the War Artists' Advisory Committee and are now held by the Imperial War Museum.[2] Lavrin continued to illustrate books including Averil Demuth's Trudi and Hansel (1938) and Hilda Lewis's The Ship that Flew (1939, 1986). She also illustrated Elisabeth Kyle’s The Seven Sapphires (1944), Holly Hotel (1945), Mirror of Castle Doone (1947) and Lost Karin (1947).[citation needed
    ]

    Later life

    After the War Lavrin illustrated books on Slovene literature such as Vladimir Levstik,

    Frieda Weekley (née von Richthofen), his mistress and wife. It was published posthumously in 1987 as D. H. Lawrence. Nottingham Connections.[citation needed
    ]

    In 1952 she published The Hop Dog (1952) in collaboration with Molly Thorp. The story was later adapted into a children’s film, Adventure in the Hopfields (1954).[4] Lavrin's interest in ballet sets and costumes resulted in her designs for Love and Litigation, choreographed by Pino Mlakar for the Slovene National Dance Company in 1956. She left sketches of the Colonel de Basil's Ballet Russe when it toured England in the 1930s.

    Lavrin also created many portraits sketches from daily life on paper in the 1950s. Her landscape oil works and watercolor portraits of her children and family are mostly held in private collections. The Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has a collection of her original illustrations. She is also represented in the collection of the Maribor Art Gallery in Slovenia. Her dry points of Yugoslavia published in 1935, in which the landscape is expressed in volumes and the people are captured as in snap shots. The Yugoslavia dry points aimed at witnessing a country and its people and have a very important historical value as they captured a region that would change irreversibly after World War II.[citation needed]

    References

    1. ISBN 0-236-40010-X
      .
    2. ^
      ISBN 978-1-904537-87-8
      .
    3. ^ https://lic.ned.univie.ac.at/en/node/19391
    4. ^ "Adventure in the Hopfields (1954)". IMDB. Retrieved 11 December 2016.

    Further reading

    • Connelly, William, “Nora Lavrin. Bibliography. : From Aesop’s Fables to Castebriski Zupan. The Life and Work of Nora Lavrin (nee Fry) 1897-1985.” IBIS Imaginative Book Illustration Society No. 13 (Winter 1999–2000)15-29.
    • Hammond, Andrew, “Through Savage Europe. The Gothic Strain in British Balkanism”, Third Text, 21:2 (March 2007), 117-127
    • Lavrin, Nora, D.H. Lawrence. Nottingham Connections, Nottingham: Astra Press, 1986.
    • Obituary, The Times, 16 September 1985.

    External links

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