Brickdale's Idylls Re-Viewed

This essay resituates Brickdale in her time, the Edwardian period, rather than the-by that time-rather passe era of the Pre-Raphaelites. Although indebted to the earlier artists, she is more accurately conceived of as, in Kyle Stoneman's felicitous phrase, a 'neo-Pre-Raphaelite.' From this perspective, a close reading of her Arthurian images helps to clarify her difference and, perhaps, suggest a new assessment of her originality, although, in the absence of essential biographical sources, any attempt to define her program must remain extremely tentative. (DLH and DNM)The mention of Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale's illustrations to Tennyson's Idylls of the King summons up a familiar set of images: a docile and devoted Enid, perched like a child on her husband's lap; a seductive Vivien, twining her fingers through Merlin's beard; a timid Elaine, retreating to her tower with Lancelot's shield; and a penitent, yet dignified Guinevere, carrying a basket of bread to the convent. Along with these images come a familiar set of assumptions about the artist: that Brickdale, lauded in her 1945 obituary as the 'last survivor of the late Pre-Raphaelite Painters,' brought a Victorian sensibility to her interpretations, as well as a woman's point of view.1 But how much light do those assumptions actually shed on this suite of illustrations? And are these assumptions a sound basis for analysis?Our knowledge of Brickdale's life is limited to a biographical armature.2 Born in 1872 into a very comfortable, upper middle-class household, Brickdale had a modest home education, and in her adolescence attended first the Crystal Palace School of Art and then the St. John's Wood School. By her early twenties, her illustrations appeared in popular magazines-from the Pall Mall Magazine to Country Life-anchoring her life-long career as a professional illustrator and a successful working artist. She also won early recognition and enjoyed the regular exhibition of her work at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, where she made her debut in 1896. Her approach to rendering a narrative-meticulously detailed, closely observed, and faithfully naturalistic-reflected the stylistic character of Pre-Raphaelite art and illustration, which, by Brickdale's time, was synonymous with literary subjects drawn from Shakespeare's plays and from Arthurian legend. But many questions remain. When we scan a list of her works and her accomplishments, we do not learn what she read, how she conceived her projects and her imagery, or where she stood on the issues of the day that we assume informed her interpretations. In terms of her perspective, Brickdale remains an enigma, leaving the illustrations to embody-and to bear-a range of messages and meanings that may never have been part of her intentions.The record of Brickdale's publications and exhibitions situates subjects from Arthurian legend as a regular part of her repertoire but no more so than those from other popular literary subjects of her day. Although she made her academy debut in 1896 with a 'Design for an advertisement' (subject unknown), she exhibited a black-and-white drawing of Sir Lancelot the following year.3 Other Arthurian subjects followed, but only within a whole range of related subject matter, which included Shakespeare, lives of the saints, medieval legends, and fairy lore, as well as such renowned Victorian poems by Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. These sources reflect the popular taste for 'traditional' British subjects, established well before the start of Brickdale's career and well-suited to her closely observed narrative style. Her opinions on these subjects are not known-she did not document how or even whether she chose her subjects or how she prepared to interpret them-but at the time she rendered them, her sources, for the most part, were well known to the reading public. Many of her works were commissioned by publishers, suggesting that the subject was not necessarily of her choosing. …