Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, R.W.S. (1872-1945)

Details
Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, R.W.S. (1872-1945)

'The Cunning Skill to Break a Heart'

signed and inscribed 'The Cunning skill to break/a Heart/Miss Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale' on an old label on the reverse ; pencil and watercolour; in original frame
15½ x 10½in. (39.5 x 26.8cm.)
Provenance
Walter Dowdeswell, 1904
Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell; Christie's, 30 June 1916, lot 4 (3½ gns. to C.H. Harrison)
Miss J. Isemonger
Miss K. Fortescue-Brickdale (died 1956)
Literature
Walter Shaw Sparrow, 'On Some Water-Colour Pictures by Miss Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale', Studio, 23, 1901, p.33
Exhibited
London, Dowdeswell Galleries, 160 New Bond Street, 'Such Stuff as Dreams are Made of!' Exhibition of Forty-Five Pictures in Water-Colour by E. Fortescue-Brickdale, June 1901, no.45
London, Leighton House, 1902, no.18
London, Leighton House, 1904, no.18
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, 1972, no.10

Lot Essay

The picture was the last item in the first of three exhibitons which the artist held at the Dowdeswell Gallery in the 1900s (see also lots 46, 48). The gallery specialised in artists who adhered to the late Pre-Raphaelite tradition, and Brickdale's friend Byam Shaw was another of their 'regulars'. The picture subsequently appeared in the two exhibitions that the artist held at Leighton House, Kensington, which was almost directly opposite her studio.

The literary source for the picture's title is not given in the catalogue.

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