Eleanor Vere Boyle

Eleanor Vere Boyle (1825–1916) was an artist of the Victorian era whose work consisted mainly of watercolor illustrations in children's books. These illustrations were strongly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, being highly detailed and haunting in content. Love and death were popular subject matter of Pre-Raphaelite art and something that can be seen in Eleanor Vere Boyle's work. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, even called her work "great in design." However, even though she was one of the first woman artists to be recognized for her achievements, she did not exhibit or sell work often as it was not acceptable given her family's social status. Thus, she signed her works “EVB” to obscure her identity and quickly became one of the most important female illustrators in the 1860s. Life Eleanor Vere Boyle was born in Scotland on 1 May 1825, a daughter of Alexander Gordon of Ellon Castle, Aberdeenshire, a descendant of the Duke of Ancaster. She was raised as the youngest of eight children in the Scottish hills above the River Dee. She later moved to England and married Richard Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork and chaplain to Queen Victoria. Boyle's fascination of nature strongly influenced her later work, which primarily consisted of garden books after her husband died. However, during her lifetime, up until she died in 1916, she produced, and was highly acclaimed for, work for children's books. Totaled up, Eleanor had written or illustrated twenty-one books in about a fifty-year time-span. All these works were inspired by many things in which Eleanor was fascinated: nature, but also fate, dreams and flowing water.