Rupert Brooke

Description

“If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England” – Rupert Brooke – The Soldier 1914.

Rupert Brooke (3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War. Known for his boyish good looks, Irish poet W. B. Yeats described him as “the handsomest young man in England”.  Brooke was educated at Rugby School and King’s College, Cambridge.
He became a visible figure in English intellectual circles, mixing with the so-called Bloomsbury Group. Prior to WW1, his poetry emphasised themes of love and nature. His poem ‘The Old Vicarage, Granchester’ (where he lived for a time) expresses an idealistic nostalgia for an England far away. His most famous work, the ‘Nineteen Fourteen’ sonnets, including ‘The Soldier’ remains for all time his epitaph.
Brooke died on St George’s Day (23 April) 1915 of septicaemia following a mosquito bite whilst serving in the Naval Hood Battalion. Brooke died on St Geroge’s Day (23 April) 1915 in a French hospital ship, at anchor in Treis Boukes Bay, Skyros. He was heading towards Gallipoli, when he fell fatally ill with septicemia. He was transferred from a the hospital ship onto Skyros—where he was, and remains, buried in an olive grove.

This painting was one of a series of 12 historical portraits depicting a poet, saint and rebel of each of the four countries of Britain & Ireland. England is represented by Rupert Brooke, Saint Edmund and Harry Hotspur.