A Day Savouring A Little Bit Of Pre-Raphaelite Heaven
I spent Saturday (27/10/2012) away from the forum, and visited the Lady Lever Art Gallery for the day. The reason being the presence of an exhibition devoted to one of the lesser known Pre-Raphaelite artists, a woman who rejoiced in the truly wonderful name of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, who in the years between 1900 and 1920 forged herself a career as a book illustrator of considerable talent, and who, lamentably, descended into relative obscurity after her death in 1945. Originally from Surrey, she became a significant part of the Liverpool art scene in the years surrounding World War I.
Although her family connections included none other than John Ruskin, she was the first member of her family to choose art as a profession, and first found inspiration by coming into the orbit of another Pre-Raphaelite, John Liston Byam Shaw, who in turn was influenced by no less a luminary than John William Waterhouse. When Byam Shaw launched his own art school, Fortescue-Brickdale became a teacher at this new institution. While her oil paintings were well received at the Royal Academy, it was her watercolours that made her reputation, being exhibited at the Dowdeswell Gallery, and The Artists' Review regarded her as being pre-destined to become a leading light amongst women artists surprisingly early in her career. Her election to a Fellowship of the Royal Watercolour Society was, in the light of such a fulsome recommendation, little more than a formality.
One of her most striking paintings has long been a part of the collection of the nearby Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool City Centre, namely, The Little Foot Page from 1905, which, despite repeatedly being connected in book commentaries with the legend of Burd Helen, continues to strike me as being more akin to a depiction of Rosalind from Shakespeare's As You Like It. The painting depicts a scene in which the central female character is taking a fairly brutal-looking pair of shears to her tresses, an action that is entirely consonant with the scene of Rosalind disguising herself as a boy during her exile in the Forest of Arden. This painting is compelling to view for anyone who has an eye for botany, because it is possible to take a field guide to the painting, and determine, on the basis of visual comparison alone, which species of plant the artist rendered upon this canvas. A little mystery in this vein was solved for me during my traversal of the exhibition, because it transpired that she had been called upon to provide, prior to this canvas and after, botanically accurate illustrations for various books, which doubtless came in extremely handy during her composition of this painting.
Another, utterly luminous work, which is permanently part of the Lady Lever collection, is The Forerunner, from 1920, an oil canvas in which the artist depicts, albeit somewhat fancifully, Leonardo da Vinci displaying a model of one of his proposed flying machines to the court of Duke Ludovico, and the work in question is utterly luminous in its use of lavish reds upon the clothing of the various figures. As well as displaying a fascination on the part of the artist with respect to flight (reflected in another work, The Guardian Angel (The Genius Of Flight) from 1918), the work is an interesting composition, portraying da Vinci as a standard bearer of rationalism in opposition to religious conservatism - though perhaps the choice of Girolamo Savonarola as the priest in this picture was less than optimal for this purpose, given that he was himself a would-be reformer both in the world of religion and politics, one who came to grief when Pope Alexander VI excommunicated him - his imprisonment, torture, and sentencing to death followed thereafter with truly indecent haste. Indeed, one of the ironies of Savonarola's career, is that he was associated in life with figures that would now be regarded as humanist in outlook. This, however, does not detract from Fortescue-Brickdale's technical brilliance in pulling off the requisite vision.
Among her much lesser known works, is Portrait Of Winifred Roberts from 1913, which features the lady in question, a member of the Byam Shaw art school of which Fortescue-Brickdale was a leading light, sitting in a relaxed pose differing substantively from the much more usual formal portrait of the era, and it too, is striking upon account of its near-photographic realism. That she could deliver such fidelity of rendition with watercolours, points to the reason why her career blossomed between 1900 and 1920 - few before here exhibited such virtuosity, and even fewer have done so since.
Sadly, photography was not allowed in the exhibition itself, but I availed myself of a copy of the exhibition catalogue, whose expense I justified on the basis that this was the first exhibition of the artist' s work in a major gallery for 40 years, and brought to public attention a range of works that had hitherto been largely hidden from view.
All in all, a delightful look at the work of an artist who really deserves to be better known, and whose fall into obscurity after her death is both lamentable and something of a mystery.
More to follow once I've spent time digesting the contents of the exhibition catalogue.
