The Gilded Apple
Artist: Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (British, 1872-1945)
Date: 1899
Medium: Watercolour over pencil
Collection: Private Collection
Description
In 1901, the neo-pre-Raphaelite artist Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale became an overnight success with a show of watercolours at the London dealers Dowdeswell’s. The works were characterized by critics as decorative moralities relying on allegory and literary reference. Focussing on one of these works, The Gilded Apple, allows an examination of this millennial moment of currency for the moral parable in which the traditional benchmark of wealth, good and benefit - gold - was a central referent.
(Gerrish Nunn, Pamela. "All is not Gold that Glitters: The Gilded Apple (1899)." Polysèmes 15 (2016).