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Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale
Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale
	Fortescue-Brickdale in about 1900
Born	25 January 1872; Upper Norwood, Surrey, England
Died	10 March 1945 (aged 73)
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Crystal Palace School of Art; Royal Academy Schools;
Known for	painting; illustration; designs for stained glass;

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (25 January 1872 – 10 March 1945) was a British artist, a late exponent of Pre-Raphaelitism.^[1] She produced paintings in oils and watercolour, book illustrations, small-scale sculptures and a number of designs for works in stained glass . ^[2]

Life

Mary Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, daughter of Matthew and Sarah Fortescue Brickdale, was born 25 January 1872 at her parents' house, Birchamp Villa in Upper Norwood, Surrey.^[3] Her father was a barrister. She was trained first at the Crystal Palace School of Art, under Herbert Bone, and entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1896. In that year she also exhibited a work at the Royal Academy, and won a prize for a design for a lunette, Spring, for the dining-room of the academy.^[4] Her first major painting was The Pale Complexion of True Love (1899). She soon began exhibiting her oil paintings at the Royal Academy, and her watercolours at the Dowdeswell Gallery, where she had several solo exhibitions.^[5]

While at the academy, Fortescue-Brickdale came under the influence of John Byam Liston Shaw, a protégé of John Everett Millais much influenced by John William Waterhouse.^[5] When Byam Shaw founded his art school in 1911, Fortescue-Brickdale became a teacher there.

In 1909, Ernest Brown, of the Leicester Galleries, commissioned a series of twenty-eight watercolour illustrations to Tennyson's Idylls of the King, which Fortescue-Brickdale painted over two years. They were exhibited at the gallery in 1911, and twenty-four of them were published the following year in a deluxe edition of the first four Idylls.^[5]

She also made designs for stained glass windows for churches and religious institutions, of which two were published in The Studio in 1900; her earliest surviving window dates from 1912.^[6] The actual stained-glass work was done by an associate, Harry Grylls. Many of these designs were for memorials, particularly in the aftermath of the First World War.^[6]

She lived during much of her career in Holland Park Road, opposite Leighton House, where she held an exhibition in 1904.^[5]

Fortescue-Brickdale was an associate member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours from 1901, and was elected to full membership in 1919; she was elected to the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1902, its earliest female member.^[3]^[7] She exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Graphic Art in 1921.^[8] Her 1921 World War I memorial to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry is in York Minster.^[9]

She was a staunch Christian, and donated works to churches. Amongst her best known works are The Uninvited Guest and Guinevere. She died on 10 March 1945,^[10]^[11] and is buried at Brompton Cemetery, London.^[12]

Books illustrated

Poems by Tennyson, 1905
Pippa Passes by Robert Browning, 1908
Men and Women by Browning, 1908
Dramatis Personae by Browning, 1909
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics by Browning, 1909
Idylls of the King by Tennyson, 1911
Story of St Elizabeth of Hungary by William Canton, 1912
Book of Old English Songs and Ballads, 1915
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale's Golden Book of Famous Women, 1919
The Sweet and Touching Tale of Fleure and Blanchfleure, 1922
Carols, 1925
Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics published by Palgrave, 1925
A Diary of an Eighteenth Century Garden, Calthorp, 1926.^[4]

Works

Love and his Counterfeits, 1904
The Uninvited Guest, 1906.
They toil not, neither do they spin
The introduction
Riches

Golden book of famous women (1919)

Intro
Héloïse and Abelard
Fair Rosamund
Dante and Beatrice
Laura and Petrarca
Joan of Arc
Catherine of Aragon
"Yestreen Queen Mary had four Maries, This night she'll hae but three; She had Mary Seaton, and Mary Beaton, And Mary Carmichael, and me" (Mary Hamilton)
Una and The Red Cross Knight
Bottom and Titania
Rosalind and Celia
Guinevere
Maud is only seventeen
Kate Barlass
Catherine of Siena
Clare of Assisi

References

^ Gerald Taylor (2003). Fortescue-Brickdale, (Mary) Eleanor. Grove Art Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T029025. (subscription required).
^ "A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale". National Museums Liverpool. Retrieved 27 September 2024.
^ ^a ^b Malcolm Warner (2004). Brickdale, (Mary) Eleanor Fortescue (1872–1945). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/55176. (subscription required).
^ ^a ^b Christopher Wood (1978). The Dictionary of Victorian Painters. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 0-902028-72-3.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Lupack, Barbara Tepa; Lupack, Alan (2008). Illustrating Camelot. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 126–8. ISBN 978-1-84384-183-8.
^ ^a ^b Nunn, Pamela Gerrish (2021). "Post-pre-Raphaelite stained glass: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872–1945)". The British Art Journal. 22 (2): 48–53. doi:10.2307/48736100. ISSN 1467-2006.
^ "The Little Foot Page". National Museums Liverpool. Retrieved 21 September 2024.
^ "List of Members", Catalogue of the First Annual Exhibition of the Society of Graphic Art, London: Society of Graphic Art: 45–48, January 1921
^ Historic England. "Cathedral Church of St Peter, York Minster (1257222)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 24 May 2021.
^ Jan Marsh & Pamela Gerrish Nunn (1997). Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists.
^ "Obituary. Times [London, England] 14 March 1945: 7. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 30 August 2013.
^ "Notable Monuments". The Friends of Brompton Cemetery. Archived from the original on 13 October 2016. Retrieved 14 April 2020.