Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, R.W.S.

(British, 1871-1945)

Lancelot and Elaine - "but to be with you still and see your face, to serve you and to follow you thr'o the world," c. 1909-1911

watercolor and bodycolor on paper laid to board

initialed EF-B (lower right); titled and inscribed (on a label attached to the reverse)

15 1/4 x 10 3/4 inches.

Provenance:

The Leicester Galleries, London, by 1911

Sold: Sotheby's, London, November 21, 2006, Lot 42

Exhibited:

London, Leicester Galleries, Autumn 1911

Literature:

Alfred Tennyson, Idylls of the King, London, 1911, illus.

Andrew Lang (ed.), Tales from King Arthur, Ware, England, 2003, p. 213, illus.

Barbara Tepa Lupack and Alan Lupack, Illustrating Camelot, Cambridge, 2008, p. 132

Donald L. Hoffman and Debra N. Mancoff, “Brickdale’s ‘Idylls’ Re-Viewed,” Arthuriana, vol. 26, no. 2, 2016, p. 34

In 1909, Ernest Brown, of the Leicester Galleries, commissioned a watercolor series of 28 subject from Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King, which Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale painted over two years. These works constituted the bulk of her 1911 autumn show at Brown's Leicester Gallery in London. The same year, the publishing company Hodder & Stoughton published Idylls of the King-a deluxe edition of the first four idylls, Enid, Vivien, Elaine, and Guinevere-that reproduced 21 of the Tennyson watercolors from the exhibition, including the present example.

Lancelot and Elaine - "but to be with you still and see your face, to serve you and to follow you thr'o the world," c. 1909-1911

Lancelot and Elaine - "but to be with you still and see your face, to serve you and to follow you thr'o the world," c. 1909-1911