Pencil Study of a Rose Bush in Bloom (left) and Lady Gay Rose, by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ROI, RWS 1872-1945. Pencil study, 1902 (The Studio, 1902). Lady Gay Rose, watercolour, 1908-9, 20 x 25 cm., signed with a monogram (Wright, frontispiece — unknown outside this publication).
The minutely observed depiction of nature, in flowers, trees and the lie of the land, was a key element of Fortescue-Brickdale’s aesthetic from the start. This was one of the characteristics that made commentators so ready to identify her as a neo-pre-Raphaelite. In the second iteration of her solo show at the Dowdeswell Galleries, in 1902, when many of the original exhibits were in private hands, she "made up the numbers" with some works on paper that included three pencil studies of specific flowers, Lilies, Oleander and Roses (nos. 25-7). The last of these, as shown above left, was reproduced in the Studio later that year as a fine example of a revival in such work (215).
Fortescue-Brickdale was, then, an obvious contender for illustrating the publication Beautiful Flowers and how to grow them, by the well-known horticulturalists Horace J. and Walter P. Wright, serialised in 1908 and published as a two-volume book in 1909 boasting "100 plates in colour." Although she was only one of eight illustrators, Fortescue-Brickdale was given pride of place with the frontispiece of volume one, Lady Gay Rose (above right). This was described in the reviews section of The Journal of Botany as “a charming study in the Chinese manner” whose author’s “sympathetic and accurate treatment of flowers will be familiar.” The entire publication had nine further plates by Fortescue-Brickdale, all in the same simple, dignified style showing the specimen against a white ground.
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Bibliography
Studio vol. 26, no. 113 (August 1902): 215.
Wright, Horace J., and Walter P. Wright. Beautiful Flowers and how to grow them. 2 vols. Edinburgh: T.C. and E.C. Jack, 1909.
Created 23 December 2022