Emma Florence Harrison

fl. 1877-1925.

"The Departure From the Day-Dream", pen & ink illustration for Tennyson's poem

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Emma Florence Harrison attended the Glasgow School of Art where she developed her art nouveau style of illustration. She was part of a remarkable group of female artists and designers at the school who became known as the Glasgow Girls and included such artists as Jessie M. King and Margaret Tarrant. Harrison and her contemporaries followed in the footsteps of the Glasgow Four, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Herbert MacNair, and Margaret and Frances Macdonald, who had adopted principals of the Art Nouveau from the Continent with added traditional Scottish elements. As the Pre-Raphaelite Movement became more popular, Florence Harrison (as she was known) and her contemporaries moved more towards romantic themes, such as Arthurian legends. The Glasgow Girls have sometimes, as a result, been described as the Last Romantics. Harrison did much book illustration for publisher Blackie (the works of Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, William Morris, etc.), and she lived for a time in London where her art was exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1887-1891.