Inspirational women: Fanny Mendelssohn

So I was thinking about what to post for our week celebrating International Women's Day and chatting to my Dad about music which we both have a great love for; he told me about Fanny Mendelssohn. She was a composer in the nineteen hundreds who created an incredible amount of music which the world still hasn’t fully heard today. This caught my interest because the credit for her work has been recently recognised and feel it needs to be celebrated. Mendelssohn had a naturally brilliant drive composing around five hundred pieces of music. In those times, it was believed to be indecent for a lady of high class to pursue any type of career. The few compositions of hers that did get published were done under her brother’s name (Felix Mendelssohn) along side his own. This lead to him playing in front of none other than Queen Victoria. When the Queen was asked which piece was her favourite it was Fanny’s! A lot her work remains unpublished and unheard to this day. The Royal College of London performed Easter Sonata in honour of International Women’s day and the 'Creative lady'. I hope in the future more of her work is heard by the world and that she finally gets the credit and recognition she deserves.

For this illustration I used good old tea bags to stain hot press watercolour paper. Then Faber-Castell fine liners (size xs & s) using a mixture of lines, curves and dots. It was really fun to do and would recommend giving it a try!