Spring

It was with this design for Spring, that Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale won the competition to design a lunette for one of the refreshment rooms at the Royal Academy, Burlington House, in December 1897. She had only begun exhibiting at the Royal Academy in the previous year. Due to this success and her work as a black and white illustrator, Gleeson White wrote in The Studio, 1898, that she was 'a young illustrator of conspicuous promise'. The prize money of 40 enabled her to carry out her first major oil, The Pale Complexion of True Love, 1899, exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Autumn Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
We are grateful to Cathryn Spence, of the Victoria & Albert Museum, for her help in preparing this catalogue entry.