The Introduction 

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale made this watercolor painting called 'The Introduction', showing a young woman meeting a group of gnomes in a forest. Fortescue-Brickdale was one of the few women to make a successful career as a painter in Britain at the beginning of the 20th century. She worked in a style known as 'Pre-Raphaelite,' which combined realistic detail with imagined scenes from the Middle Ages, or in this case, from folklore. The Pre-Raphaelites were very interested in the relationship between the human and the natural world and their artworks reflected this. We can see here how the artist has tried to imagine what an encounter between a young woman and the mythical world of gnomes would be like. Perhaps it is a depiction of women's societal role during that time in society. Or maybe it's an indication of the changing societal norms where women were entering fantasy worlds. The historian would be interested in looking at popular illustrations of fairy tales from this period to understand her artistic choices better.