Background
Felicia Browne was born at Weston Green, Thames Ditton, Surrey, on 18 February 1904, she studied at the Street John"s Wood School of Art and the Slade School of Art between 1920-1921 and 1927-1928.
Felicia Browne was born at Weston Green, Thames Ditton, Surrey, on 18 February 1904, she studied at the Street John"s Wood School of Art and the Slade School of Art between 1920-1921 and 1927-1928.
Slade School of Fine Artist
She was the first British volunteer to die in the Spanish Civil War. She arrived at the Slade at the unusually young age of 16 where she was a contemporary of William Coldstream, Clive Branson, Claude Rogers and Nan Youngman. She travelled to Berlin in 1928 and to study metalwork and became an apprentice to a stone mason.
One account describes her taking part in anti-Fascist street-fighting.
In the early 1930s she returned to Britain, leaving her sculptures and tools behind. In 1933 she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, attracting the interest of M15 and Special Branch who continued to monitor her until she left for Spain in 1936.
She contributed art to Left Review. However, they arrived shortly before the military rebellion against the Spanish republic that heralded the start of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and were immediately caught up in the violence that engulfed Barcelona on 19 July 1936.
On 3 August 1936, after several attempts she successfully enlisted in the PSUC (Catalan Communist) Karl Marx militia to fight in Aragaon on the Zaragoza front.
On 25 August 1936 Browne was killed in action on the Aragón front near Tardienta, while part of a band of raiders that attempted to dynamite a Fascist munitions train. The party was itself ambushed and Browne was shot dead while assisting an injured Italian comrade. Browne"s body had to be left there but comrades retrieved a sketchbook from her possessions filled with drawings of her fellow fighters.
These made their way to Tom Wintringham, a journalist for the Daily Worker, who suggested to Harry Pollitt that they be sold by the Artists" International Association to raise money for Spanish relief.
The Artists" International Association (American Institute of Architects) presented Browne as being the epitome of an artist choosing to take direct political action.
She was living in Berlin during the rise of Nazism and participated in anti-Fascist activities. Their objective was to reach Barcelona in time for the People"s Olympiad (the socialist riposte to the Olympic games in Hitler"s Berlin).
According to the Daily Express correspondent Sydney Smith she demanded to be enlisted to fight, declaring that "I am a member of the London Communists and I can fight as well as any man".