The Gilded Apple
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ROI, RWS 1872-1945
1899 (signed with a monogram, and dated)
Watercolour over pencil
Private Collection, ex-Sotheby's
[Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Notice that the finely dressed woman's crown has already slipped off as she reaches towards the deceptive prize (for, as Pamela Gerrish Nunn points out, the apple is only "gilded"). In Gerrish Nunn's fully contextualised critique, this painting, like other allegorical works by Brickdale, is seen as an expression of women's dilemmas at this time: "Brickdale’s ... Atalanta / Eve / New Woman is being tested at an ominously shaky point in Britain’s history. Characters on trial in other compositions in the [1901] exhibition were also set to test the worth of material wealth against less tangible riches.... The Gilded Apple is a particularly subtle version of this test" (Gerrish Nunn).
