Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale: Illness

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale illustration
for "Book of Old English Songs & Ballads"

"Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, now fifty years old, fell seriously ill in the early 1920s. In June 1923 a friend's diary records, 'Bricky is better but her hands are still bandaged', while in September another friend recorded, 'Isn't it dreadful about the bad time poor Eleanor has been having? She is so good and patient but she has masses of work to do and can't touch a pencil'. In December the commissioners of an altarpice heard from Charles Fortescue-Brickdale that 'his sister is slowly recovering from her long illness and hopes to resume work in January'. As it was she spent the last part of 1923 convalescing at Amelie les Bains, the Pyrenean spa town.

As a consequence of this illness, as yet unidentified, Fortescue-Brickdale's sight began to deteriorate, leading her to favour larger-scale work rather than the finely worked watercolors in which she had specialized. An altarpiece was commissioned for the Chapel of Remembrance in the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924, and was followed by another triptych, entitled 'Knightly Service,' for the Winchester College for boys in Hampshire. 

Her last solo 'coloured book' appeared in 1925 with twelve plates by the artist, whose choice of texts allowed her to shift her attention from the medieval, which had so occupied her over the years, to the Jacobean and Carolingian. This modest amount of pictorial content probably reflected her capacity to work on fine detail since her illness. 

Though the late 1920s brought a marked decrease in Fortescue-Brickdale's exhibition appearances, these years saw a number of her window designs realized in churches large and small around the country. These included the sad mission of commemorating the younger of her two brothers, John, who had died in 1921 and two other members of the congregation of his church."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "A Pre-Raphaelite Journey: The Art of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale" by Pamela Gerrish Nunn.)