Saru Gallery
       Japanese Prints & Japanese Paintings

Biography Gifford, Marguerite (1877 - 1969)

Born in Louisville, USA, Marguerite Gifford was an unremarkable upper-middle class woman, whose travels from 1937-1941 after her husband's death took her to many places that were to be the theatre of WWII soon afterwards. She was one of the spectators in Florence in 1938 when Benito Mussolini received Adolf Hitler, and the impending war in Europe made her travel to Japan in 1939. There she studied woodblock printing, apprenticing herself to two Japanese printmakers. After that she travelled to the Pacific, to New Caledonia, and returned home in 1941. Until her death she remained involved in the arts.