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Jan and Cora Gordon

English artist duo

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ60765497 ↗
Source-derived summary

Jan and Cora Gordon were a British art duo and co-authors active in the first half of the 20th century. They are known as contributors to the "tramp memoir" genre of travel writing of the interwar period.

Background

Jan Gordon (1882–1944) was an English printmaker, a painter and draughtsman, and journalist and critic, born Godfrey Jervis Gordon at Wokingham in Berkshire, England. His wife Cora Gordon (born Cora Josephine Turner in Buxton, England, also known as Jo Gordon, 1879–1950) was an English artist, writer, and musician. The couple, painters in Paris during the Edwardian period, were married in 1909.

Biography

Both Jan and Cora exhibited at the 1910 Allied Artists Association London salon.

Their first book, The Luck of Thirteen (1916), documented life in the Serbian mission of the Royal Free Hospital and an audacious escape during the 1915 retreat from Serbia. James Berry, leader of this mission, in his 1916 book described the Gordons and their various exploits during their time in Serbia.

According to Berry,

The chief credit for the success of the expedition seems to belong to Gordon, though how much was due to Mrs. Gordon's command of the Serb language cannot be estimated.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Jan and Cora Gordon” as english artist duo. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1882, 1944, 1879, 1950—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Cora, Gordon and English can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as english artist duo. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60765497. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1882, 1944, 1879 and 1950.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jan and Cora Gordon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jan and Cora Gordon primary sources, Jan and Cora Gordon archive and Cora research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jan and Cora Gordon”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Jan and Cora Gordon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.