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Black and white photograph of Felicia Browne holding a child ([c.1936])
Felicia Mary Browne was an English artist , painter, sculptor and Communist who was the only British woman combatant and volunteer to die in the Spanish Civil War , when she was killed in action at Aragon on 25 August 1936.
Felicia was born at Weston Green, Thames Ditton, Surrey, on 18 February 1904. Her family were middle class but her father, had progressive political ideas, and encouraged his daughter in her early artistic endeavors. Felicia had an older brother, called Harold, who was named after their father, and who died out in France in 1918 during the 1st World War. She also had two older sisters, Helen, and Edith, and a younger brother called Billy, who also tragically died fighting in the Spanish Civil War, two years later than Felicia, who after joining the International Brigades in February 1938 lost his life in Aragón in the following month..
Felica studied at the St John's Wood Art School and the Slade School of Art between 1920–21 and 1927–28 and was awarded the Certificate in Drawing. Arriving at the Slade at the unusually young age of 16, she was a contemporary of William Coldstream, Henry Tonks, Clive Branson, Claude Rogers and Nan Youngman.
In 1928 she went to Berlin, to study metal work and Sculptureat a state technical training facility in Charlottenburg, Berlin (she spoke several languages very well, In 1929. She became an apprentice to a stone mason whilst there, and witnessed the rise of fascism first-hand and became politically active and dedicated much of her time to encouraging working women to fight for better conditions. She also actively participated in anti-fascist activities and was involved in anti-Nazi street-fighting.
Having joined the Artists International Association, Felicia visited the Soviet Union in 1931,to see how people lived and worked under a communist regime. She also went to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, sketching the townscapes and the local people there.. She spoke at many meetings on her experiences in the Soviet Union on her return in the early 1930’s where she continued to study at Goldsmiths College and the Central School of Arts and Crafts and contributed art to The Left Review.
She donated her personal fortune to refugees, and, in a subsequent period of privation, took employment in a restaurant kitchen. Her ability to speak four languages eased her travels through some of the most remote parts of Europe.”
In 1933 Felicia joined the Communist Party of Great Britain, attracting the interest of M15 and Special Branch. Whilst she was a patient at Guy’s Hospital, she distributed leaflets and attempted to convert some of the nurses to communism. As a result, a watch was established on her postal mail, and it became clear that her home, in Bessborough Gardens and then Guilford Street, London, were being used as cover addresses for foreign mail being sent to Communists in Britain.
In 1934 Felicia won a prize for her design of a medal for the Trades Union Congress, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Ironically, some of the future recipients of this medal, also turned out to be Communists.
Felica's involvement in the Spanish Civil War was not directly planned. While many of the other fighters had to travel from Britain in secret after the British government declared it illegal to go to Spain to fight, Browne had, in fact, arrived just before the war broke out,. In July 1936 Browne embarked on a driving holiday to France and Spain, accompanied by her friend Dr. Edith Bone, who was a left-wing photographer. Bone went on to become heavily involved with the establishment of the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, (PSUC) in Barcelona.
Their objective was to reach Barcelona in time to attend the International People's Olympiad, which had been organized as protest against the 1936 Olympics that were being held in Hitler's Berlin, however just two days before the the event’s scheduled date, on July 17, 1936, the fascist military rose up against the Spanish republic, and the Spanish Civil War began. Felicia and Edith were immediately caught up in the violence that engulfed Barcelona. and as Athletes either fled or were stranded; Browne decided to stay and fight.
The Spanish Civil War had began after generals Emilio Mola and Francisco Franco instigated a coup aimed at overthrowing the country's democratically elected republic.At first, the efforts by Nationalist rebels to fire up military revolts throughout Spain succeeded only partially. In rural areas with a pro right-wing political allegiance, Franco's confederates generally succeeded, seizing political power and imposing martial law. In urban areas, particularly cities with leftist political traditions, such as Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Bilbao and Málaga, the revolts met with fierce opposition and were repulsed.
The Nationalists on one side were mostly composed of the military, large landowners, businessmen and the Roman Catholic church. The Republicans on the other side were urban workers, most agricultural labourers, the intelligentsia and the educated middle class. The two sides were partly composed of members from opposite extremes of the political spectrum, such as the fascist-oriented Falangists and the militant anarchists.
The conflict pitted the leftist Republican government against fascist-backed Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco. With Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini already in power in Germany and Italy, anti-fascists around the world feared that Spain would be the next to fall, threatening the future of European democracy. When world powers like the United States and the United Kingdom refused to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, more than 35,000 anti-fascist volunteers poured into Spain from 52 countries to take up arms against the Nationalists. They included Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, idealist intellectuals like a young George Orwell and communists like Felicia committed to crushing an ideological enemy.
At the same time as the Spanish Civil War was raging, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was gaining strength in Britain, marching and holding meetings in predominantly Jewish areas. In 1936, a clash between Mosley’s blackshirts and anti-fascist demonstrators in London’s East End – what was to become known as the Battle of Cable Street – spurred many people to scrutinise what was happening in mainland Europe. Fighting in Spain was seen by many as the only way to stop fascism spreading further across Europe, They saw in Spain the risk of allowing fascism to spread unchecked. For them, joining the struggle was about stopping that advance, which is reflected in many of the popular calls to action that echoed throughout the Spanish Civil War: “No pasarán” (They shall not pass), “This far and no further” and “If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.”
The foreign volunteers who fought in the “International Brigades” of the Spanish Civil War hoped to ward off the coming nightmare of Franco’s brutal dicatorship and, in turn, arrest the insidious spread of fascism across the rest of Europe.
“The Spanish Civil War looked like it could be the moment when fascism was finally thrown back,” says Richard Baxell, an historian and author of Unlikely Warriors: The Extraordinary Story of the Britons Who Fought in the Spanish Civil War. “There was this feeling that perhaps people could go out armed with just a gun and political conviction and do their bit alongside the Spanish people to defeat fascism at last.” The foreign volunteers who fought in the “International Brigades” of the Spanish Civil War hoped to ward off the coming nightmare of Franco’s brutal dicatorship and, in turn, arrest the insidious spread of fascism across the rest of Europe. Sadly it didn’t work out that way.
Browne learned of a mission to blow up a fascist munitions train and boldly volunteered for it. However, the Communist party attempted to dissuade her participation. She defied the orders and went to the party offices, where she demanded to be enlisted to fight on the Saragossa front. According to the Daily Express correspondent Sydney Smith, she declared that "I am a member of the London Communists and I can fight as well as any man." embodying the fearless determination with which many women travelled into the warzone with a readiness to lay down their lives.
A desire for equality of the sexes underpinned the ideologies of many women volunteers. While a number claimed to have no political inclination or reason for entering the conflict beyond religion or humanitarianism, those that did were often also fuelled by the feminist sentiments spreading across the continents at that time.
One of many female volunteers to fight – there were mixed-gender Spanish combat battalions on the front line and women-only rear guard battalions – Felicia was the only known British woman.The Spanish Civil War was one of the first wars where women were allowed to participate in combat, which further cemented the Republic’s view of women as equals.
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Drawing by Felicia Brown of a Republican militia (1936)
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Felicia Brown sketches
On 3 August 1936, Felicia successfully enlisted in the PSUC (Catalan Communist) Karl Marx militia to fight in Aragon. Shortly after joining she wrote to her friend Elizabeth Watson in England, describing her desperation to get involved; "Apparently no chance of aviation school on account of my eyesight, God damn it."
James Hopkins, the author of Into the Heart of the Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War (1998) describes Felicia’s mission and tells how she met her death on 25 August 1936:
"A German comrade on the raid, George Brinkman, has left a fascinating typewritten report, describing their mission. According to Brinkman, the pudgy, bespectacled Browne was forced to clear a final gender hurdle before being allowed to accompany the raiding party. She went to its leader and asked if he would accept a woman comrade as a volunteer. After attempting to intimidate Browne by telling her of the dangers that awaited them, and failing, he accepted her as one of the ten who would attempt the hazardous mission. They left Tardienta by car and travelled to the farthest point of the front, where they disembarked walked about twelve kilometres to the rail line. Browne and two others were told to keep watch and signal if there was trouble. The remaining seven moved close to the tracks. They set the charges with only thirty seconds remaining before the train passed."
"On their way back, the group stumbled upon a macabre scene, a crashed plane with the remains of the pilot in the cockpit. As they hurriedly buried the dead man, a dog suddenly appeared, and with him an oppressive sense of danger. Brinkman moved quickly up a steep incline where he saw thirty-five or forty enemy soldiers nearby. He signaled to the rest to take cover. To re-join them, Brinkman had to run through heavy rifle fire. An Italian volunteer beside him fell with a bullet through his foot. Brinkman made him as comfortable as possible under the desperate circumstances and then ran to the others for help. Browne insisted on returning with first aid for the wounded man. When she reached him, the enemy concentrated its fire on the two of them, killing her with bullet wounds to her chest and back.”
As Angela Jackson pointed out in British Women and the Spanish Civil War (2002): "Her story has all the ingredients essential to heroic legend, the willing sacrifice of her life to save that of a comrade."
Browne's body could not be recovered, and had to be left there, but her comrades retrieved a sketchbook from her possessions, filled with drawings of her fellow soldiers, these stoic men and women all having been captured in Browne’s lyrical, romantic modernist style.
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In her obituary in the Artists International Association journal it said: “She had it in her to represent the very best type of the new woman, but the kind of upbringing to which she was automatically subjected to, and the forces with which she had to compete in a society where commercial values are preeminent, seriously and unnecessarily delayed her in harmonizing all the remarkable powers within her”.
“She had most of the best human characteristics, but she conceived her own variety more as a source of opposition than of enjoyment. She was without guile, duplicity or vanity; painfully truthful and honest, immensely kind and generous, completely humane, loving any aspect of livingness, and as capable of enormous humour as she was deeply serious. She was gifted at every craft that she tried, a witty letter-writer, an amusing cartoonist, a vital and interesting companion, and socially much too gracious to belong credibly to the twentieth century."
“But if her fighting was the expression of her deeply conscientious but less happy side, at least she had intellectual faith in the future. And she found happiness at the end, as far as one can judge from her letters, in a real sense of comradeship with her fellow militiamen. Intellectually she was quite clear about what was necessary for the next few years other life.”
Felicia Mary Browne's friend and colleague Nan Youngman, who was much affected by Felicia's death, organized a memorial exhibition for Browne in October 1936.
The Spanish Civil War was one of the greatest idealistic causes of the first half of the twentieth century, Of the roughly 40,000 selfless3 foreign volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 were killed and thousands more were recorded as missing. They paid the ultimate sacrifice for their ideals,
Most of those who fought in Spain were men with left wing sympathies, motivated by the Europe-wide threat of fascism. British writers like George Orwell, WH Auden and Laurie Lee were just three of the men whose work now better informs our understanding of the war and British participation in it. Felica's story in contrast, is far less well known, but through her sketches and drawings, she documented her own experiences, as an unofficial war artist .
While some historians view the International Brigades as naive idealists or expendable pawns for the communist regime in the USSR, but at the time they showed the Spanish Republic and people around the world that Spain was not fighting fascism alone, Given what was going on in the world, that was a powerful message.
In her farewell address to what remained of the beleaguered International Brigades in 1938, the Spanish Republican leader Dolores Ibarruri, known as “La Pasionaria,” praised the foreign volunteers: “Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Republicans—men of different colors, differing ideology, antagonistic religions, yet all profoundly loving liberty and justice, they came and offered themselves to us unconditionally… You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy's solidarity and universality.”
Sadly Franco , with help from Hitler and Mussolini, overpowered the Republicans, Franco mounted a major attack against Catalonia in January 1939, which proved a decisive moment because Barcelona, the region’s capital, was unable to fend off the superior power of the Nationalists. On March 28, 1939, the Nationalists triumphantly entered Madrid, leaving the Republicans little option but to raise the white flag over the city, bringing to an end the bloody threeyear struggle. Franco ruled as a dictator until his death in 1975.
Even in death Felicia Mary Browne continued to help the cause she died for: Her drawings 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 (AIA) to raise money for Spanish relief campaigns. The AIA presented Browne as being the epitome of an artist choosing to take direct political action.
“If painting or sculpture were more valid or urgent to me than the earthquake which is happening in the revolution,” she once told a friend who questioned why she didn’t simply concentrate on her art, “if these two were reconciled so that the demands of the one didn’t conflict … with the demands of the other, I should paint or make sculpture.”
Felicia Mary Browne 's collection of drawings, prints, book designs, sketchbooks and correspondence were purchased by the Tate in 2010 and have since thankfully been fully digitalised. Now, with the Tate archive , we can at last get a fuller picture of the only known British woman to give her life to the Spanish civil war. Here is a link to the collection:
The spectre of fascism still haunts and universal equality has not been achieved. We should not forget the likes of Felicia Mary Browne and the other internatinalist brigade volunteers who preceded us who gave their lifes so selflesssly,, and we must continue to resist oppressive , fascist forces, with whatever way is at our disposale,.
Felicia Browne: Unofficial War Artist : Animating the Archives
The following film uncovers the work and untimely death of Felicia Browne, an event that reverberates through the work of artist Sonia Boue, here reflecting on the significance of British volunteers, like Browne, who helped republican exiles like her father.
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Felicia Browne) is celebrated here in this evocative song composed by Patrick Dexter.
The Road to Barcelona (Felicia Browne)
Words and music by Patrick Dexter
Vocal by Eilís Dexter
Oh the sweet sound of the guitar
Play on comrade, play on!
Let the music flow like this cheap wine in my cup
while I sit here in my reverie
Every strum draws my mind back
to that journey we took together
We packed the car and set off
on the boat to France
Passion and ideas were our potion
We sipped fine wine,
You and I
As Eagles soared way up high
The snow capped mountains in our rearview mirror.
In café’s, through cobbled streets
We shared our passions and our dreams
Oh how I miss that sweet aroma
On the Road to Barcelona
Seized upon our chance
Became volunteers at last war for us,
hell to those who doubt our gender
My dearest friend Felicity you always had one up on me
Debating the world’s changes that were stirring
“Anything is possible” you kept declaring
You were going to change the world miss Brown
Through vineyards and sweet smelling flower fields
As we drove through sunshine with the rooftop down
We sipped fine wine,
You and I As Eagles soared way up high
The snow capped mountains in our rearview mirror.
In café’s, through cobbled streets
We shared our passions and our dreams
Oh how I miss that sweet aroma
Of the Road to Barcelona
Now I am old I drink bad wine here all alone
My thoughts a drift in this muddy river
But what good is sweet reverie
When you are gone, all is left is this memory
I long to be back again the times we had there my dear friend
But with the wind in our hair our ideals took over
You died for your beliefs, a martyr for your dreams
all I can do now is sit here and remember
Sipping wine, as Eagles fly
high above the snow capped mountains
The Basque sunrise in our rearview mirror.
In café’s on cobbled streets
sharing our passions and our dreams
Oh how I miss that sweet aroma
On the Road to Barcelona
And I miss you dear Felicity
and the time we had
On the Road to Barcelona
Sources :
CPGB archives
