Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

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

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. 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. 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.

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.

She lived during much of her career in Holland Park Road, opposite Leighton House, where she held an exhibition in 1904. She exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Graphic Art in 1921. Her 1921 World War I memorial to the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry is in York Minster.

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, and is buried at Brompton Cemetery, London.

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.