Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, R.W.S.

Purchased from the R.S.W. exhibition by Samuel Courtauld in 1925, for £100;

Mrs E.C.F. Weale;

London, Sotheby's, 30 January 1991, lot 243;

Where purchased by Seymour Stein.

London, Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, Summer Exhibition, 1925, no. 95;

Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Centenary Exhibition of Works by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, 1 December 1972 – 7 January 1973, no. 34.

Illustrated London News, Christmas edition, 1927, pp. 26–27.

Depicting the issuing of a challenge against Death by the winged figure of Love, this watercolour represents the epitome of the last phase of Pre-Raphaelitism, of which Brickdale was one of the strongest and most talented exponents. The Challenge was purchased by Samuel Courtauld, the famous industrialist and art connoisseur. After seeing an exhibition of French art at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1922 Courtauld began to collect Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings and assembled an extensive collection including masterpieces, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Peach Blossom in the Crau by Van Gogh, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet and La Loge by Renoir.