Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, R.W.S.

Purchased by the parents of the previous owner in the 1920s (sale: Sotheby's, London, 18 June 2020, lot 183)

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

The Builder, 16 April 1904, n.p

'We know which is the most remarkable work in the exhibition, but the Hanging Committee did not or they would have hung it in a more central position... The Posthumous Child, is a most remarkable production. It is an allegorical picture. In a deep glen, with her feet among thorns and thistles, a beautiful young woman in widow's mourning leans against a rocky barrier on the right, her figure and drapery designed so that they make the commencement of a curve which is continued above by an indistinct rainbow, with the line of which an angel, beautiful in colour, with outstretched wings, leans over to her, and in front of the angel hovers in the air a little figure of a naked infant with its hands full of forget-me-nots. It is as thoroughly a poem in a painting as we have ever seen, and one in which the pictorial effect and composition are as complete as the pathetic interest of the picture. It ought to have been hung in a place of honour in the centre of the end wall, or in respect of the higher aims of art there is nothing in the room equal to it; but it is a work that not many people will really understand.' (The Builder, 16 April 1904, n.p)

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale attended the local Crystal Palace School of Art and gained admittance to the Royal Academy Schools. She was a talented and successful artist in oils, watercolours and was also recognised for her illustrations and design work. At the age of twenty-seven she held a solo exhibition at Dowdeswell Galleries in New Bond Street called Such Stuff as Dreams are made of! which was well reviewed. Many of the forty-five works on display found buyers. She was the first female member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and was also an associate member of the Royal Watercolour Society. With funds from sales she managed to acquire her own studio in London and also taught at Byam Shaw’s art school founded in 1911. She had a long career working in the pre-Raphaelite style and was still sending works to the Royal Watercolour Society in 1942, three years before she died.