"One of the last survivors of the later Pre-Raphaelites—later, because they had no contact with the original Brotherhood—was Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945). Like Byam Shaw and Robert Anning Bell, she inherited the Pre-Raphaelite love of moral and symbolic meaning, of allegory and decoration, of glowing colour. . . . Concentrating upon water-colour work of a highly wrought character, she was necessarily limited in her output. . . . Essentially an illustrator, she put precise drawing into a jewelled setting of brilliant colour . — Martin Hardie, 130
Watercolors
- Ding Dong Bell & Oh What a Naughty Boy
- Sing a song of sixpence & The King was in the counting house
- The Guests
- An Opportunity
- The Cup of Happiness
- The Duenna
- The Travesties of Life
- Uncounted Hours
- The cunning skill to break a heart
- Riches
- Love and Adversity
- Youth and the Lady
- To-day for Me
- Sleep, that Knits up the Ravell'd Sleave of Care
- He Married a Wife
- Yesterday
- The Gilded Apple
- The Posthumous Child
- Laura of Avignon/ Petrarch's Laura at Avignon
- A Rose and Her Three Daughters
- The Child of Truth and Fiction
- Pencil Study of a Rose Bush in Flower and Lady Gay Rose
- Enid
Pen and ink
- King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
- But he lo'ed the youngest abune a'thing
- First she sank and then she swam vntil she cam to Tweed Mill dam
- Sir Lancelot du Lake
- Counsel is mine and sound prudence
- The Princess and the Swineherd
- Isabella and the Pot of Basil
- Headpiece [Blind Justice]
Illustrations
- To a Daisy and The Female Vagrant
- Eloisa and Abelard
- Bottom and Titania
- Guinevere
- Maud is Only Seventeen
- St. Clare
- Prospero and Ariel
- But Mordred Laid His Ear Beside the Door and There Half Heard - The Coming of Arthur
- Enid
- Evelyn Hope
- The Last Ride Together
- Another Way of Love
- Oh to be in England / Now that April's there
- If I could have that little head of hers / Painted upon a background of pale gold
Bibliography
Bate, Percy. The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters: Their Associates and Successors. 3rd ed. London: George Bell, 1905. Internet Archive, from a copy in Robarts — University of Toronto. Web. 10 June 2026.
Brickdale, Eleanor Fortescue. Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale's Golden Book of Famous Women. London, New York and Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton, 1919. Internet Archive. Contributed by the University of California Libraries. Web. 7 October 2021.
E.B.S. "Eleanor F. Brickdale, Designer and Illustrator." The Studio [London] Vol. 13 (1898): 103-108. Google Books. Free to read.
Forbes, Chrisopher. The Royal Academy Revisited, 1837-1901. Ed. and Intro. by Allen Staley. New York: Forbes Magazine, 1975.
Hardie, Martin. Water-colour Painting in Britain. III. The Victorian Period. Ed. Dudley Snelgrove with Jonathan Mayne and Basil Taylor. London:R. T. Batsford, 1968.
Marsh, Jan, and Pamela Gerrish Nunn. Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. London: Virago, 1989.
Sparrow, Walter Shaw. "On Some Water-colour pictures by Miss Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale." The Studio [London]. 23 (June 1901): 31-43? [copy missing pp. 43-50]. Internet Archive. Web. 27 February 2012.
Created 25 December 2010
Last modified 10 June 2026