The Posthumous Child, by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ROI, RWS 1872-1945

The Posthumous Child

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ROI, RWS 1872-1945

Watercolour with bodycolour

Exhibited 1904

74 x 41 cm., 29 x 16 in.

Signed EF. Brickdale

Private Collection, ex-Sotheby's

See below for contemporary review in The Builder

[Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Image and and caption material added by Jacqueline Banerjee, with thanks to Sotheby's.

Excerpt from "The Centenary of the Watercolour Society" in The Builder

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. Miss Fortescue Brickdale is the most notable artist among their recent elections. Artists who put intellectual meaning into their pictures do not always quite keep the balance between art and moralising; Miss Brickdale has not quite done so in her “‘Scandal” (74), which is not altogether beautiful in a pictorial sense, nor does it tell its meaning very clearly. But her other work, “The Posthumous Child” (130), 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. [407]

Bibliography

"The Centenary of the Watercolour Society." The Builder, Vol. 86. Issue 3193. 16 April 1904. 406-08. Internet Archive. Digitizing sponsor: Khale/Austin Foundation. Web. 24 October 2022.

Created 24 October 2022