ABSTRACT
Sarah Raphael was born in East Bergholt in Suffolk, the middle child of three, with an older brother, Paul, and a younger one, Stephen. She was from the beginning an equable infant who rarely cried, content to lie for long periods watching others. Her first major journey was at five months to Spain, where the family stayed until she was thirteen months old. Sarah was very perceptive; some time after her fifth birthday and when she was attending St Paul's Girls School in London, the pattern of extended hymn books at morning assembly caught her eye, spawning a number of drawings which exploit repetitions. At a key moment in the infant Sarah's intellectual as well as tactile development, the nanny instigated inventive and creative games involving an enormous sand tray and much finger-painting. Many of her self-initiated drawings and paintings of the time are witty, cynical or flamboyant while the schoolwork tends to be more cautiously investigative.
