On 17th March 1902, recorded the ‘Court Circular’ in The Times, the Princess of Wales (later Queen Mary) visited ‘the loan exhibition of paintings and drawings by Miss Fortescue Brickdale’ at Leighton House. The Princess was at the vanguard of popular fashion in doing so – this exhibition was a reprise of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale’s first solo show of 45 watercolours from the previous year, which led a reviewer in The Artist to enthuse that ‘rarely, if ever, has a woman painter made a great reputation as quickly and thoroughly.’ By 1902 London was ‘raving’ over her, according to the New Zealand painter Frances Hodgkins.

Fortescue-Brickdale’s career began in illustration, but the scope of her activity soon broadened from small pen and ink decorative designs for articles in fashionable periodicals to significant commissions to illustrate luxury publications of Tennyson and Walter Scott. These watercolour designs were for illustrations to a volume of Christmas carols published in 1925. Her fame in this vein was such that in 1918 she was commissioned by a collective of women’s organisations to produce an illuminated address, shown here, for presentation to King George V and Queen Mary on their silver wedding anniversary. The wide range of Fortescue-Brickdale’s creative output was acknowledged by the title given to her obituary in The Times – ‘A versatile artist’. As well as watercolour and illustrative work her activity encompassed oil painting, sculpture, and costume and stained glass design.