Paula Rego – Jane Eyre

Paula Rego – Jane Eyre

Author: Paula Rego & Marina Warner
Price: £65
Publisher: Enitharmon Press
Publication Date: 2005
Format: Original pictorial boards
Condition: Very good plus
Pages: 64
Edition: First reprint

Location: OSR: 002814

Octavo. Original pictorial boards. pp. 64. Illustrated throughout in colour and black and white by Rego and including a folding plate. Small bump to the upper front board. Illustrations very nice and clean. A very good plus, tight, clean copy.

Paula Rego: A Short Biography

Paula Rego was a pioneering visual artist whose work challenged conventions, gave voice to untold stories, and left a profound mark on the contemporary art world. Born in Lisbon in 1935, Rego spent much of her adult life in Britain, where she developed a powerful artistic language rooted in narrative, symbolism, and psychological intensity.

Raised in a liberal and intellectually curious household under Portugal’s authoritarian Estado Novo regime, Rego was exposed from an early age to both political tension and artistic expression. Her father, an electrical engineer, strongly encouraged her independence and creativity. In the early 1950s, she was sent to a finishing school in Kent, after which she was accepted into the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where she studied painting and drawing among a generation of emerging talents.

Rego’s early work was characterised by semi-abstract forms and influences from surrealism, but over time her style evolved into a deeply figurative and highly personal mode of storytelling. She drew on a wide range of sources—folk tales, Portuguese legends, political injustice, and her own lived experience—to explore themes of power, subjugation, femininity, and resistance. Her use of pastels, in particular, became a defining feature of her later work, allowing her to create rich, textured surfaces with emotional immediacy.

Throughout her career, Rego often addressed uncomfortable or overlooked subjects, particularly those relating to women. Her series on abortion, produced in response to political debates in Portugal, and her numerous re-imaginings of fairy tales, are stark and unflinching in their depiction of vulnerability, courage, and repression. Her art consistently gave space to female agency and inner life, often subverting traditional narratives and exposing underlying power dynamics.

Rego’s personal life was closely tied to her artistic journey. She married fellow artist Victor Willing, with whom she had three children. After Willing’s health declined due to multiple sclerosis, Rego became both his carer and the family’s primary financial support. These years of emotional and practical strain deeply informed her work, imbuing it with themes of endurance, sorrow, and domestic reality.

Her contributions to British and international art were widely recognised. She was appointed the first Associate Artist at the National Gallery in London in the 1990s, and her work has been exhibited at major institutions across Europe and beyond. She received numerous honours during her lifetime, including a damehood, reflecting both her artistic impact and cultural significance.

Paula Rego passed away in 2022, but her legacy endures. Her work continues to speak with clarity and conviction, offering uncompromising insight into the human condition—especially the experiences of those too often unheard or unseen. Through her art, she reshaped how stories are told, how women are represented, and how emotion is rendered in visual form. Her influence remains vital in the ongoing conversation between art, society, and truth.

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