Live Auction 14233Victorian Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art
Edith Martineau, A.R.W.S. (1842-1909)
Lot 50

Edith Martineau, A.R.W.S. (1842-1909)

Aurora Leigh

Closed13 December 2017

Price Realised

GBP 10,000

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Edith Martineau, A.R.W.S. (1842-1909)
Aurora Leigh
signed 'Edith Martineau. 1881.' (lower left) and further signed and inscribed 'Aurora Leigh/ by/ Edith Martineau/ 35 Gordon Sq./ London' (on the artist's label on the reverse)
pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic on paper laid on board
23 x 12 ½ in. (58.4 x 31.8 cm.)

Benjamin Armitage.
with Charles Nicholls, Manchester.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, Sussex, 25 October 1994, lot 180
Anonymous sale; Phillips, London, 6 November 2000, lot 86, where purchased by the present owner.

Specialist note

Edith Martineau was one of the first female artists to be admitted to the Royal Academy Schools and as an Associate Member of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours. Her delicate handling and use of colour owes much to the Pre-Raphaelites, and she exhibited with many of their followers at the Dudley Gallery in the 1880s. Aurora Leigh is an epic novel in blank verse by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in which the heroine devotes herself to writing a great poem and breaking free from the expectations of women's roles.