Sophie Jane Gurney (née Raverat, formerly Pryor; 20 December 1919 – 10 June 2011) was an English artist, linked to many of the leading intellectual and cultural figures of the early 20th century. As an artist she preferred brightly coloured variations on natural forms, working in both

gouache Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache ...

and print. She later became a member of the 21 Group. Gurney was born in 1919, the younger daughter of English wood engraver Gwen Darwin and French painter

Jacques Raverat Jacques Pierre Paul Raverat (pronounced Rav-er-ah) (20 March 1885– 6 March 1925) was a French painter; Raverat was the son of Georges Pierre Raverat and Helena Lorena Raverat, née Caron; he was born in Paris, France, in 1885. Raverat s ...

. Gurney was a great-granddaughter of the naturalist

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...

. Her father died in 1925 when she was only five years old. Gurney and her elder sister Elisabeth were temporarily taken into the care of her first cousin once removed Nora Barlow and her husband, Sir Alan Barlow. She was educated at home in Cambridge and then at the

Perse School for Girls The Stephen Perse Foundation is a family of independent schools in Cambridge and Saffron Walden for students aged 1 to 18. The Foundation is made up of 3 nurseries (2 in Cambridge and 1 in Saffron Walden, Essex) for ages 1–5, 2 Junior Schoo ...

, before studying violin in Switzerland. She was accepted by the

Royal College of Music The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire established by royal charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, UK. It offers training from the undergraduate to the doctoral level in all aspects of Western Music including performanc ...

, switching to medicine just prior to the outbreak of World War II, but later abandoned her studies in 1940 after her marriage. She continued to play in orchestras and chamber groups throughout her life. She first married the entomologist

Mark Pryor Mark Lunsford Pryor (born January 10, 1963) is an American attorney, politician and lobbyist who served as a United States Senator from Arkansas from 2003 to 2015. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Prior to becoming senator, he was Attorn ...

in 1940; they had four children. Emily (1942–2008), William (born 1945),

Lucy Lucy is an English feminine given name derived from the Latin masculine given name Lucius with the meaning ''as of light'' (''born at dawn or daylight'', maybe also ''shiny'', or ''of light complexion''). Alternative spellings are Luci, Luce, Lu ...

(born 1948) and Nelly (born 1952), who married the film director/farmer

Philip Trevelyan Philip Erasmus Trevelyan (born 22 August 1943) is a British organic hill farmer, entrepreneur and former film and television director, most noted for the 1971 documentary film '' The Moon and the Sledgehammer''. Early life He is the son of the ar ...

. Sophie and Mark Pryor were involved in a road traffic accident in 1967, in which she was relatively unharmed but which left him with brain damage in a

persistent vegetative state A persistent vegetative state (PVS) or post-coma unresponsiveness (PCU) is a disorder of consciousness in which patients with severe brain damage are in a state of partial arousal rather than true awareness. After four weeks in a vegetative stat ...

for almost three years until his death in 1970, aged 51. She also had to deal with her son William's heroin addiction. She subsequently remarried, to Henry Charles Horton Gurney OBE (1913–1997, known as Charles), professor of

mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and mathematics principles with materials science, to design, analyze, manufacture, an ...

at the

University of Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong (HKU) (Chinese: 香港大學) is a public research university in Hong Kong. Founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, it is the oldest tertiary institution in Hong Kong. HKU was also the f ...

(1966-1973), who had been Mark's boss at

RAE Farnborough The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), before finally losing its identity in me ...

. After his retirement, they moved to Totnes, Devon. Sophie Gurney died there in 2011, aged 91.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gurney, Sophie 1919 births People educated at the Perse School for Girls English violinists 20th-century English artists 2011 deaths