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Lot Essay
Robert Browning's lyric poem Evelyn Hope was first published in Men and Women in 1855, and the present watercolor was used to illustrate an edition published in 1909. It narrates the story of the death of its young heroine, from the point of view of a highly optimistic narrator, who seeks to find hope in the situation. The poem begins:
'Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;
Little has yet been changed, I think:
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.'
Brickdale portrays Evelyn outside a grand house, holding the geranium she has just picked. She portrays her as a beautiful, lively young women, with no sense of the tragedy to come, sharing some of the narrator's optimism.
We are grateful to Pamela Gerrish Nunn for confirming the authenticity of this work on the basis of a photograph and her contribution to the cataloguing.
'Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;
Little has yet been changed, I think:
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink.'
Brickdale portrays Evelyn outside a grand house, holding the geranium she has just picked. She portrays her as a beautiful, lively young women, with no sense of the tragedy to come, sharing some of the narrator's optimism.
We are grateful to Pamela Gerrish Nunn for confirming the authenticity of this work on the basis of a photograph and her contribution to the cataloguing.