Lot 29
29
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, R.W.S. (1871-1945)
These lots have been imported from outside the EU … Read more Various PropertiesEleanor Fortescue Brickdale established a career as an illustrator, painter and designer. She entered the Royal Academy schools, where she won a prize for her mural design in 1897. She exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy and Royal Watercolour Society throughout her career and continued the Pre-Raphaelite tradition, adapting romantic and moralizing medieval subjects such as the following watercolours.
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, R.W.S. (1871-1945)

Petrarch's 'Laura at Avignon'

Details
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, R.W.S. (1871-1945)
Petrarch's 'Laura at Avignon'
signed 'EFBRICKDALE' (lower right, in a cartouche)
pencil and watercolour with gum arabic, heightened with touches of bodycolour and with scratching out on artist's board
14 3/8 x 10 in. (36.5 x 25.5 cm.)
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 12 July 2007, lot 45.
Special notice
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Lot Essay

Born in Arezzo, Italy, Petrarch was still a child when he and his family moved to Avignon, following the Papal court in 1312. A poet and scholar, Petrarch was regarded as the father of Humanism and of the modern Italian language and his writings and beliefs are widely held to have set the stage for the birth of the Renaissance.

The most celebrated of his vernacular poetry was about Laura, a woman with whom he fell in love after seeing her in a Church in Avignon in 1327. Her true name is unknown, yet she was immortalised in a series of poems in which Petrarch praises her beauty and character.

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