![Image of page [frontispiece]](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/thumbs_small/s173.r-1.s.jpg)
page: [frontispiece]
Venus Verticordia.
D.G. Rossetti, pinx.
Walter L. Colls. Ph. Sc.
Figure: Replica of
Venus Verticordia.
“Venus stands naked amongst a mass of
honeysuckle and cluster of pink roses ... in her hand an apple ... and
a dart .... Minor variation in the action of the dart and the pose of
the hands, also in the fall of the hair, here worn in a fringe on the
forehead; the butterflies on the halo omitted, but one is poised on
the apple.”
Surtees, p. 99-100
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
By
F. G. STEPHENS
Author of
“Celebrated
Flemish and French Pictures”,
“Landseer”, etc.
Note: There is an insignia included which is oval in design with ornamental
laurel leaves surrounding it to form a rectangle. In the center is
the title of the series (of which this work is a part) and the name of the
editor, all surrounded by elaborate scrollwork. Below this are two
circular head and shoulders portraits in three-quarter profile. Text
in illustration: THE PORTFOLIO. Artistic Monographs Edited by
P. G. Hamerton. Raffaello / Sanzio, Rembrandt / Van Rym.
London
Seeley and Co. Limited, Essex Street, Strand
New York, Macmillan and Co.
1894
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
PAINTER AND POET
NOWHERE in Time's vista, where the forms of great men gather
thickly, do we see many shapes of those who, as painters and as poets
have been alike illustrious. Among the few to whom, equally on
both accounts, conspicuous honours have been paid, none is superior to
Rossetti, of whose genius doubly exalted the artists say that in design he
was pre-eminent, while, on the other hand, the most distinguished poets
of our age place him in the first rank with themselves. As to this pro-
digious, if not unique, distinction, of which the present age has not yet,
perhaps, formed an adequate judgment, there can be no doubt that with
regard to the constructive portion of his genius Rossetti was better
equipped in verse than in design.
It is certain that our subject looked upon himself rather as a painter who wrote than as a verse-maker who painted. It is
probable
that the very facility, which, of course, had been won with enormous
pains, and was maintained with characteristic energy and constant
care, of his literary efforts led Rossetti to slightly undervalue the rare
gifts of which his pen was the instrument, while, as to painting, his
hard-won triumphs with design, colour, expression, form, and visible
beauty of all sorts seemed to him the aptest as well as the most successful
exponents of the passionate poetry it was, by one means or the other, his
object to make manifest. His mission was that of a poet in art as in
verse, and, by devoting the greater part of his life and all his more
arduous efforts to the former means, he made it plain that, notwithstanding all obstacles, the palette served his purpose
better than the pen.
I refer thus emphatically to Rossetti's genius in its double form as well as to the inevitable division of his energies which
attended that
circumstance, because, while I wonder at his achievements and know how
great were the powers he employed, I cannot help thinking that a less
complex nature than his would have done still more than, so far as time
and space allow, these pages have to report of and illustrate.
Gabriel Charles Dante was the elder son, and, his sister Maria
Francesca being his senior, the second child of Gabriele Rossetti and
Frances Mary Lavinia, his wife, born Polidori; she wrote some poems
and educational books of value, and died several years ago. William
Michael, third child of this union (born in 1829), is the still living
accomplished writer on poetry and art, and the tenant of a high post in
the Inland Revenue Department, Somerset House. The fourth child
is Miss Christina Georgina Rossetti (born 1830) whose
Goblin Market
attests her to be one of the most distinguished poetesses of this
century. Gabriele Rossetti was descended from an Italian family of
some renown, whose original name was Della Guardia, and he was
born in 1783 at Vasto d'Ammone, in the Abruzzi, the son of one
Domenico, who was connected with the iron trade of that town.
Gabriele, a man of culture, whose specialty was in profound studies of
Dante—whence one of the names of his elder son—removed to Naples,
and held an honourable office as custodian of antique bronzes in the
then Bourbon Museum of the capital. This post and all his other
possessions were forfeited in 1820, when he joined in revolutionary
movements against Ferdinand I., King of the Two Sicilies, which, by
the aid of the Austrians, were defeated and the chiefs proscribed. Among
them Rossetti took refuge at Malta in 1822, and, ultimately, in London,
where he arrived in 1825, and in the next year married the above-named
lady, who was a daughter of Signor Gaetano Polidori, a secretary of
Count Alfieri, the Italian poet and supposed second husband of Louisa
of Stolberg, Countess of Albany, wife and widow of Charles Edward
Stuart, the besotted Young Pretender. The wife of Signor Gaetano was
a Miss Pierce, an Englishwoman. Besides the lady who became Mrs.
Gabriele Rossetti, Gaetano had for his son Dr. Polidori, one of Lord
Byron's physicians, with whom his lordship fell foul in a certain
Epistle
from Mr. Murray
, and who, with other things in verse and prose,
wrote a sanguinary novelette called
The Vampire, which still retains its
shadow of a reputation. Arrived in London Gabriele Rossetti maintained
himself as a teacher of his native tongue, and succeeded so well in that
capacity that the Professorship of Italian in King's College was offered
to him and accepted in 1831.
As might be expected of one possessing so many accomplishments and
whose career had been marked by so much courage, the professor was a
man of striking character and aspect, so that when I was introduced to
him in 1848, and his grand climacteric was past, and, as with most
Italians, a life of studies told upon him heavily, I could not but be
struck by the noble energy of his face and by the high culture his
expression attested, while a sort of eager, almost passionate, resolution
seemed to glow in all he said and did. To a youngster, such as I was
then, he seemed much older than his years, and while seated reading at a
table with two candles behind him and, because his sight was failing,
with a wide shade over his eyes, he looked a very Rembrandt come to
life. The light was reflected from a manuscript placed close to his face,
and, in the shadow which covered them, made distinct all the fineness
and vigour of his sharply moulded features. It was half lost upon his
somewhat shrunken figure wrapped in a student's dressing-gown, and
shone fully upon the lean, bony, and delicate hands in which he held
the paper. He looked like an old and somewhat imperative prophet,
and his voice had a slightly rigorous ring speaking to his sons and
their visitors. Near his side, but beyond the radiant circle of the
candles—her erect, comely, and very English form, and face remarkable
for its noble and beautiful matronhood, and but half visible in the
flickering glow of the fire—sat Mrs. Rossetti, the mother of Dante
Gabriel. He too, leaning his elbows upon the table and holding his
face between both hands so that the long curling masses of his dark
brown hair fell forward, sat on the other side, his attenuated features
sharply outlined by the candle's light.
It is not certain whether the scene which thus impressed my
memory was presented at No. 38, Charlotte Street, Portland Place,
one of those then very “respectable,” but dull, and now much deteriorated
opposing lines of brick walls, with rectangular holes in them, which
Londoners call houses, where, on the 12th of May, 1828, our subject
was born, or whether No. 50 in the same street was thus signalised.
To the latter house the Rossetti family migrated about the time in
question. It is fortunate that a “Board” has not, as in many neigh-
bouring regions, changed the numbers of the houses in Charlotte Street,
and that its monkey-like activity has, for the present at least, spared
the record of a famous family. Nevertheless, the birthplace of the
Rossettis will, doubtless, some day be marked with an honourable white
stone. Certain it is that they were all born at No. 38, and that in
April, 1854, at No. 50, the ardent self-sacrificing patriotism of Pro-
fessor Gabriele Rossetti found its earthly close. Tennyson's “long
unlovely” Wimpole Street, where the Laureate was wont to stand waiting for the
- hand that can be clasped no more,
and which is close to our poet's birthplace, is not more “bald,” than that
which took its name from the ill-favoured wife of George III. Rossetti
was christened Charles after Mr. Charles Lyell, his godfather, of Kin-
norchy, Fife (whose more famous son wrote
The Principles of Geology),
Gabriel, after his father, and Dante after the illustrious poet. We know
that his first teaching was due to his mother, an accomplished and devoted
matron whose affection was, even to his latest days, ceaselessly acknow-
ledged by her son. Mr. Knight tells us the lad's first school was under
the Rev. Mr. Paul, in Foley Street, whence, in 1837, he was with his
brother, removed to King's College School, where he stayed till 1843,
and received all the advantages of that capital academy; these, however,
did not include what are now called “sports,” a circumstance which of
course had not a little influence on his character in after life.
1
Transcribed Footnote (page 8):
1 It has been said that Rossetti shared at least some of the athletic proclivities and aptitudes of British youth, and was
accustomed to enjoy energetic exercises. This is
quite a mistake, for, although he was in youth a tolerably good walker, he never excelled
in that respect. It was an error which has made him appear as a rower; indeed, I
remember when in my boat he proposed, because it was in his way, to throw over-
board one of the stretchers (!); he never cared to swim, and, if he rode at all, he could
not be called a rider. The fact is that, when he pleased, which, until his later days,
was both often and long, no one worked harder than Rossetti; but, as a glance at his
frame and face amply attested, his energy was not physical. In after life he deplored
his youthful neglect of school games and struggles of the more manly kind.
At King's College School the Italian professor's son acquired, as his
brother tells us, “an education in Latin, French, and the rudiments of
Greek.” Italian was, of course, his customary, if not his native tongue;
to these collectively considerable attainments must be added a “certain
knowledge of German,” which was more than enough to enable him to
read in that language. After some tentative and rather “boyish”
literary efforts, resulting in an experimental drama, and a prose romance
or two, one of which was printed by his grandfather, Mr. Gaetano
Polidori, Rossetti determined to become an artist. This was in the
autumn of 1843, a date which, however, must not be taken as that of
the youth's beginning to draw. Indeed, his brother tells us that our
subject was even then a member of a sketching club, and the same
authority still possesses some drawings made in ink to illustrate a
story of the designer's, called
Sorentino
, by means of which, by the way,
he even thus early appears in that double capacity of author and artist
which always obtained with him. The influence of Retzsch and his
once-famous
Outlines anent
Faust was manifest in all the productions of
this category by Rossetti, as well as all his colleagues of the P-R.B. who
could draw, that is six of the seven. Every one of these was accus-
tomed to make designs in this manner. Thus, some of the finest
“inventions” of Sir John Millais's most brilliant youth were, with
stringent care and delicacy, put upon paper. That influence is manifest
in the beautiful outlined design called
Genevieve
, which charms us
in this text, and has not been reproduced till now.
There is no doubt that Rossetti's systematic training as an artist was
begun in 1843, and at Mr. Cary's then well-known academy, which
stood at the south-east corner of Charlotte Street and Bainbridge Street,
Bloomsbury. It was a capital drill-ground for drawing from the
antique, beyond which step of his training Rossetti did not pass in that
place, including drawing from the human skeleton, but not painting.
Here, with frequent excursions into the realms of poetry proper, he
remained, I fear, in a somewhat desultory mood, rather less than three
years, during which period he prepared the drawing of a statue, then
demanded by the Royal Academy ere its tyros were admitted as
Probationers to the Antique School in Trafalgar Square. In July, 1846,
he was admitted a Student of the Academy. “I saw,” says a fellow
student, “Rossetti, whom Fame of a sort had preceded, enter the school
with a knot of Probationers, who, as if to keep each other in coun-
tenance, herded together. All their forerunners turned, as was natural,
to the door of the room, and noticed among the freshmen the saturnine,
thin, and for a youth of nearly eighteen, not well-developed tyro other
‘Caryites’ had talked of as a poet whose verses had been actually
printed, and whom they described as a clever sketcher of chivalric and
satiric subjects, who, in addition, did all sorts of things in all sorts of
unconventional ways. Thick, beautiful, and closely curled masses of
rich brown much-neglected hair, fell about an ample brow, and almost
to the wearer's shoulders; strong eyebrows marked with their dark
shadows a pair of rather sunken eyes, in which a sort of fire, instinct of
what may be called proud cynicism, burned with a furtive kind of energy,
and was distinctly, if somewhat luridly, glowing. His rather high cheek-
bones were the more observable because his cheeks were roseless and
hollow enough to indicate the waste of life and midnight oil to which the
youth was addicted; close shaving left bare his very full, not to say
sensuous, lips and square-cut masculine chin. Rather below the middle
height, and with a slightly rolling gait, Rossetti came forward among his
fellows with a jerky step, tossed the falling hair back from his
face, and, having both hands in his pockets, faced the student world
with an
insouciant air which savoured of defiance, mental pride and
thorough self-reliance. A bare throat, a falling, ill-kept collar, boots
not over familiar with brushes, black and well-worn habiliments,
including, not the ordinary frock or jacket “of the period,” but a very
loose dress-coat which had once been new—these were the outward and
visible signs of a mood which cared even less for appearances than the
art-student of those days was accustomed to care, which undoubtedly
was little enough. Apart from all these unconventionalities one saw at a
glance that the partial slovenliness of the newcomer was far from being a
sign of mere vanity affecting pride and, in contempt for others, seeking
to be singular.” It must be remembered that Rossetti had all his life been
accustomed to meet in his father's house poets, scholars, and patriots of
mark. When he entered the Academy he was by no means unknown,
many a “Caryite” had preceded him from Bloomsbury, and not a few
turned to welcome him to the Antique School.
In that school Rossetti worked somewhat less than was desirable,
intermittently, and as if without a serious intention to profit by it to the
utmost; nor did he ever pass to the higher grades of the Life and
Painting Schools. It is clear that literature, abundant reading and
writing poetry were his chief delights till about March, 1848, when,
much stirred by the vigorous and noble design of Madox Brown's
Parisina
, which he saw at the British Institution in 1845, and thus
strengthened impressions due to the same fine artist's contributions to
the Westminster Hall Exhibitions of 1844 and 1845,
1 and, above all,
to the pathos and originality of Brown's picture in the “Free Exhibition”
at Hyde Park Corner in 1848, he wrote to the latter expressing the
highest admiration of his works, and begged for lessons in painting, in the
technique of which our subject had, it is beyond question, made no con-
siderable progress. This appeal was made in such enthusiastic terms that
as, with a great deal of humour, Brown was wont to tell in after years, the
recipient fancied such compliments were not unlikely to cover an inten-
tion to “make fun” of him. Brown therefore, before calling on his
would-be pupil, provided himself with a thick stick and sallied forth,
intending to use it if need be. To Charlotte Street he went, and seeing
“Mr. Rossetti” on the doorplate was partly reassured, but held to the
cudgel until the young Rossetti's manifest sincerity disarmed all sus-
picion and, finally, impelled Brown so warmly that he then and there
undertook the office of a teacher, not for fees, but entirely for the love of
art, and in order to be helpful to one so anxious and so deeply moved.
Rossetti himself was wont gleefully to tell his intimates that the first
result of Brown's teaching was dismay, because the subject set before
the pupil for accurate and stringent imitation was a group of jars,
such as pickle-pots, or some such things, in still life, the uncom-
promising prose of which did not suit the aspirations of the tyro.
Nevertheless, there can be no doubt whatever that to Brown's guidance
and example we owe the better part of Rossetti as a painter
per se,
although his will to study with tenacity, and thus command success,
might have been stiffened by the encouragement and example of Mr.
Holman Hunt, apart from which, I fear the latter-named student was not
Transcribed Footnote (page 11):
1 These were
The Body of
Harold brought to the Conqueror
, a cartoon, 1844, and
Justice, 1845.
the fittest guide for a genius like Rossetti, who very soon departed from
the uncompromising principles of the indomitable friend who had neverbeen, even for an hour, his model in art. Rather had
the brilliant and
happy power of Millais, one of the truest painters of the age and a
born artist, been as light before the subject of these pages. Rossetti
was considerably behind his friends. Brown was his senior by seven
years, and a thoroughly trained artist, who had exhibited in this country
in 1841; Millais was a Gold Medal Student in the Royal Academy
before the foundation of the P-R.B., and an exhibitor in 1846; while
Mr. Holman Hunt, an exhibitor from the last-named year, had passed
through ordeals of practice and training of the most self-exacting
stringency, far beyond what Rossetti, although he had never departed
from the conviction that his chief function was painting, and not poetry, had submitted to.
Desiring to become a thoroughly trained painter, Rossetti wrote to
Brown. It appears that, with greatly increased admiration of Brown's
skill and genius, Rossetti had seen besides
Parisina
, and other instances
at the British Institution, that artist's contribution to the “Free
Exhibition of Modern Art,”
1 which in the spring of 1848, was formed
near Hyde Park Corner. This noteworthy and epoch-marking instance was named
The First Translation of the Bible into English
, or, more aptly,
Wickliffe reading his Translation of the New Testament to Johnof Gaunt. Painted in 1847-8, it was No. 216 at the gallery in question, where it attracted much attention, aroused abundant controversies,
and, above all, allowing for the idiosyncrasies of the artist, was the first Pre-Raphaelite picture of the original stamp
ever produced. It
Transcribed Footnote (page 12):
1 This gallery was afterwards known as the Portland Gallery, and removed to Regent Street, where it survived till 1861. It
was originally held in the
ci-devant Chinese Gallery, Hyde Park Corner, and filled a long, well-lighted brick building standing on a site in the rear of the present
Alexandra Hotel, and originally constructed for the exhibition and sale of Chinese and Japanese
bric à brac. The time not being ripe for an adequate development of that cult of quaintness and strong colour which has culminated in
the wildest Impressionism, so-called, of which we are now witnessing the decline and fall, the Chinese Gallery, as an exhibition,
came to grief in a year or two. It gave way to the “Free Exhibition,” as it was humorously called, because there was nothing
free about it, the artists paying for their places, besides a percentage on the prices of their pictures when they sold them
there, while the public paid forthe privilege of seeing them as well as for the catalogues which described them.
was, of course, exhibited months before the foundation of the Brotherhood in the autumn of 1848, and undertaken while the
P-R.Bs. proper were still in their original darkness. A happy combination of Italian taste, and the technique of the Low Countries
of the pre-Rubensian epoch, the gravity, energy, high finish, and pure and brilliant coloration of this noble piece had, as
I said in the
Portfolio of 1893, p. 66, profound effects upon the painters of the Brotherhood.
It was in the autumn of 1848, that Rossetti, finding the accommodation of the paternal house in Charlotte Street too limited
for his purpose, joined Mr. Holman Hunt (with whom he had not previously been particularly intimate) in renting a studio at
the then No. 7 Cleveland Street, Fitzroy Square, a house which stood next to the south-west corner of Howland Street, before
one reaches the workhouse. It was, even then, a dismal place, the one big window of which looked to the east, and through
which, when neither smoke, fog, nor rain obscured the unlovely view, you could see the damp, orange-coloured piles of timber
a neighbouring dealer in that material had, within a few yards of the room, piled in monstrous heaps upon his backyard. In
this forlorn quarter Rossetti began his first picture in oil that deserved the name, although, as already intimated here,
certain tentative experiments in portraiture with that vehicle had exercised him with more severity than success. Nothing
could be more depressing than the large gaunt chamber where the young artist executed two memorable pictures and from which
posterity must perforce date the inception of Pre-Raphaelitism of the primitive and stringent, not to say hide-bound sort.
Except early in the morning, nothing like that fulness of light which painters now demand was obtainable where the dingy walls,
distempered of a dark maroon which dust and smoke stains had deepened, added a most undesirable gloom. The approach to it
was by a half-lighted staircase up which the fuss and clatter of a boys' school kept by the landlord of the house, and too
often dashed with sounds of chastisement and sorrow, frequently arose; add to these uncomely elements a dimly lighted hall,
surcharged by air of which the damp of the timber yard was not the only source of its mustiness, and a shabby out-at-elbows,
giving access from the street that, even then, was rapidly “going down in the world.” It was sliding so to say, to its present
zero of
rag and bottle shops, penny barbers, pawnbrokers and retailers of the smallest possible capital. Such was the place where
Mr. Holman Hunt, then in his twenty-first year, and Rossetti, who had not completed his second decade, met and began to work
out their destinies. The former, who on that occasion left his father's house, was the master of a good deal less than a hundred pounds, being
the price, or what remained of that sum, for which he had sold to a prize holder of the “Art Union,”
1 his noteworthy No. 804 in the Academy of 1848, entitled
The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro
, an illustration of Keats's
Eve of St. Agnes.
It was an excellent example which, without the least quality of Pre-Raphaelitism, attested the remarkable skill of the artist
and his rare sense of the picturesque in design. He had before this time painted, besides pot-boiling portraits, two or three
less ambitious works.
Rossetti was yet, apart from the studio, a member of his father's family, and, unlike his comrade, still, being so young,
dependent upon his father, but resolutely devoted to art, that is to say to the expression of the poetry of his nature by
means of painting, rather than in verse. It is the more to his honour that, while his facility in verse was rare, brilliant,
and great, he had at this period to undergo agonies of toil and passionately to, so to say, tear himself to pieces, while
he became a painter according to the lofty standards of Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, and John Millais. These, as well as other
friends of his, witnessed the greatness of the struggle and honoured accordingly the
Transcribed Footnote (page 14):
1 This was the now deceased Mr. Charles Bridger, a well-known archæologist and antiquary, whose
Index to Printed Pedigrees has proved the value of his services. The prize was £60 or thereabouts, for the winner being a friend of mine, I negotiated
the business, but forget the exact sum in question.
Transcribed Footnote (page 14):
2 Millais, too, had exhibited at the Academy in 1846, his
Pizarro seizing the Inca of Peru, his
Elgiva (which he sold for £120) in 1847; his picture of
The Widow's Mite, which, with life-size figures, was at Westminster Hall in 1849, occupied this artist in 1848, so that he exhibited nothing
at the Academy in that year. There was no Pre-Raphaelitism in any of these instances, nor otherwise until the painters' contributions
to the Academy of 1849 marked their adherence to the newly pronounced principles of the Brotherhood. In March of this year
Rossetti's
Girlhood of Mary, Virgin
was shown at Hyde Park Corner, and by Brown, his splendid
King Lear
, which is now in the collection of Mr. Leathart, of Gateshead, and, as a powerful illustration of Pre-Raphaelitism a glory
of the English School, worthy to be compared with any masterpiece of Rossetti in his riper days, with
A Huguenot
, or
The Proscribed
Royalist
of Millais.
victor of that strenuous self-contest. Under these conditions, and in the studio here described Rossetti began to paint
The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin
, which is, so far as he was concerned, the first outcome of the Pre-Raphaelite views he had accepted. Whether he had adopted
them under the inspiration of one or more of his friends, or, as some have supposed, had invented them, matters little. That
he took an independent line in regard to art the work in question emphatically affirms; the truth seems to be that Brown's
influence predominated in his studies, while the mysticism of his own mind directed him where neither the dramatic intensity
of Millais and Brown, still less the stringent realism of
Mr. Holman Hunt, had any power. The design was certainly made rather early in 1848, probably before going to Cleveland Street.
How independent that line of thought and art had already become, that is how entirely free from impressions due to any of
those artists of power with whom he was then associated, I could not better demonstrate than by setting before the reader
a very sufficient, but much reduced transcript of Rossetti's design, made in fine outlines and exquisitely drawn, to illustrate
Coleridge's
Love, and having for its text the wooing of Genevieve—
- ;She lean'd against the armed man,
- The statue of the armed knight;
- She stood and listened to my lay,
- Amid the lingering light.
- I played a soft and doleful air,
- I sang an old and moving story—
- An old rude song, that suited well
- That ruin wild and hoary.
If ever pencil gave the tender pathos and suggested the moving
cadences of a poet's verse this lovely drawing, which has never been
reproduced before, does so entirely and sympathetically. Quoting his
brother's own record, a sort of diary, Mr. W. M. Rossetti tells us
that “On August 28 [1848] Rossetti sat up all night, and made,
from 11 p.m. till 6 a.m. an outline of Coleridge's
Genevieve, ‘certainly the best thing I have done.’”
1The drawing was, I believe, produced
Transcribed Footnote (page 15):
1 The choice instance is made in ink, with a very fine, probably crow-quill, pen, and bears, in a monogram, “G. C. D. R., August, 1848.” Not long after this the artist ceased
to use his name of Charles, and thenceforth adopted the style “Dante G. Rossetti,”
or a monogram, of which there is more than one version, comprising “D.G.R.” only.
as the artist's contribution to a rather ambitious body calling itself “The
Cyclographic Society,” according to the rules of
which each member
Genevieve
.
Rossetti's first complete Design. Lent by Sir E.
Burne-Jones.
Figure: Standing woman leans against a statue of a knight while
listening to a seated man play the lute.
furnished a design to be placed in a portfolio with others, circulated
and subjected to the criticism of all who chose to offer their
opinions. The design itself was given to Mr. Coventry Patmore who, not
long since, gave it to Sir E. Burne-Jones, to be exchanged for a
drawing by that master himself. It now belongs to Sir Edward, who
generously lent it to illustrate this sketch of his old friend's art.
To return to
The Girlhood of Mary,
Virgin
, the style, gravity, and grace of which are manifest
developments of the like qualities of
Genevieve
,
it is indispensable to illustrate the
leading facts in its history, as the first example of Rossetti as a
Pre-Raphaelite out of which naturally arises an account of the origin
of the Brotherhood bearing that name. Mr. Holman Hunt has in the
Fortnightly
Review
given a version of the
history of the body, which, though not quite complete, is, as far as
it goes, correct. It is to the effect that some time after the two
comrades settled in Cleveland Street, they encountered at Millais's
Sig. B
Note: The final sentence on this page ["In course of time
Collinson, having painted a a remarkable picture..."] contains
a typographic error: the article "a" is repeated.
house in Gower Street, a book of engravings from frescoes in the Campo
Santo of Pisa, that is to say from pictures, the purity, energy,
simplicity, and poetic veracity of which served as points of
crystallisation, or
nuclei of enthusiasm for the
till then somewhat nebulous ideals in art the three men severally and
independently of each other possessed. Then and there, or very shortly
afterwards, the friends determined to form what may be called a League
of Sincerity, with loftier aims than artists generally cared for, a
leading principle of which implied that each confessor should paint
his best with due reference to nature, without which there could be no
sincerity. There was no intention of following, much less copying the
modes and moods of the artists who preceded Raphael, nor of rejecting
anything which had been attained in art's service since the days of
that Prince of Painters. Each friend was to work in his own way, and,
if an edifying use could be made of the subject he chose for his art,
so much the better, yet nothing like a didactic, religious, or moral
purpose was insisted on by any Brother. The enthusiasm of Rossetti
prompted the idea of forming a “Brotherhood,” which in a
very few days was enlarged to include James Collinson, then a painter
of domestic
genre of conspicuous ability and great
promise; Thomas Woolner, a sculptor of rare gifts and prodigious
skill; the present writer, who was then in training as a painter, and
W. M. Rossetti, who acted as secretary to the society. In 1848 none of
these men, except Collinson and Woolner, was more than twenty-one
years of age. Naturally enough, Brown was solicited to become a
Brother, but he, chiefly because of a crude principle which, for a
time was adopted by the other painters, declined to join the
society. This principle was to the effect that when a member had found
a model whose aspect answered his ideas of what his subject required,
that model should be painted exactly, and so to say, to a hair. Such a
hide-bound rule was, of course, an absurdity, destructive of all art
and hopeless. It is not to be supposed that enthusiasm for the right
was the monopoly of the leading trio, or that during several years
after the date in question, any one of the Brotherhood turned aside
from his duty as a member. In course of time
Collinson, having painted a a remarkable picture to which much less
respect than is due has been
awarded, and, being sorely tried by religious influences and a wavering will, openly seceded.
1
Rossetti gallantly began and carried out his beautiful though tentative
Girlhood of Mary,
Virgin
, which represents Mary and her mother, St. Anne, seated at an embroidery frame in a balcony and beneath a vine whose foliage
extended
over a lattice, through which is a view of a landscape without the chamber. In front of the group six books are piled, each
inscribed with the name of a Virtue, while near the volume stands a child-angel, who is watering a tall lily. Joseph is trimming
the vine, amid the leaves of which the Holy Dove is resting in a golden halo. The lily is
not only the Virgin's emblem, but serves as a model for the embroidery she is supposed to be devoutly engaged upon while her
mother tenderly and gravely regards her. The sonnet Rossetti printed in the catalogue of the Free Exhibition describes her
as being
- As it were
- An angel-watered lily, that near God
- Grows and is quiet.
This sentence sufficiently indicates the mystical
and allusive mood of the painter in 1848, as well
as illustrates the devout spirit which the
companionship of Mr. Holman Hunt tended to
strengthen while the counsel
Transcribed Footnote (page 18):
1 Walter Howell Deverell, a much beloved fellow-student,
with artistic gifts time could surely have
developed, was nominated, but not actually
elected, to fill the place of Collinson. He died
February 2nd, 1854, aged twenty-six. Collinson
became a member of the Society of British Artists,
which did not recognize Pre-Raphaelitism in any
of its forms, and, being well advanced in middle
life, died some years since. What Woolner was
expected to do as a Brother I do not exactly know,
but in Art and otherwise he lived a Knight of the
Order of Sincerity, became a Royal Academician
of great renown, and died October 7th, 1892. As
for myself, having been stringently trained in the
practice of Art, I found the experience thus won to
be of great value in the profession of an Art-critic,
into which “gentle craft” I gradually
drifted, and so remain. In the same profession Mr.
W. M. Rossetti has made a position of importance,
besides that to which he holds as a
littérateur.
Ford Madox Brown, whose death occurred October 6th,
1893, left a name we all honour as that of one in
the higher ranks of Art. It appears thus that of
seven young men and Brothers five have attained
eminent positions, four of them being pre-eminent,
although for years after the society was formed no
single member, whatever his position might be,
escaped insult, obloquy, and wicked and malicious
misrepresentation. The more conspicuous the Brother
was the more outrageously was he attacked.
of that artist and Madox Brown helped materially
the execution of the picture which, apart from its
prodigious merits and simply as the first work of a
painter whose training had been both brief and
interrupted, I never cease to look upon with
indescribable wonder. A little flat and gray, and
rather thin in painting, it is most carefully drawn
and soundly modelled, rich in good and pure
colouring; and in the brooding, dreamy pathos, full
of reverence and yet unconscious of “the time to
come,” which the Virgin's still and chaste face
expresses, there is a vein of poetry, the freshest
and most profound. Rossetti had no difficulty in
finding models whose aspects he could delineate
without scruple as fittest for his purpose; his sister
Christina sat for the Virgin, his mother for St.
Anne. The Child-angel was painted from a
younger sister of Mr. Woolner, whose features did,
perhaps, require a little modification. The artist's
descriptive sonnet, above quoted, continued with
the account of the Virgin's girlhood, which lasted
- Till one dawn, at home,
- She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
- At all, yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed;
- Because the fulness of the time was come.”
This passage distinctly points to the next picture of
Rossetti, the supremely beautiful
Ecce Ancilla Domini!
for the
Ancilla
in which the artist's sister again sat, and which again illustrates
the brooding, dreamy pathos of the painter's
mystical mood, as well as the virginal charm of the
lady who sat for its principal figure and face, a
charm to which
The Girlhood of Mary,
Virgin
, as well as the
Ecce Ancilla
Domini!
manifestly owe much, if it was not
actually the prompting
raison
d'être
of
both the works. There is an excellent reproduction
of the latter in the
Portfolio for 1888, with
an illustrative note by the present writer.
1
On that occasion it was said that this small
picture on panel—it measures only twenty-eight by
sixteen inches—is the one perfect outcome of the
original motive of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
by its representative and typical member. It is not
correct, nor would
Transcribed Footnote (page 19):
1 It was priced at the gallery at £80, and
sold, I believe, to the Marchioness of Bath for that
price. It now belongs to her daughter, the Lady
Louisa Feilding, who lent it, as No. 286, to the
Academy in 1883. There is an amusing note on the
selling of this picture in the
Art Journal,
1884, p. 150.
Ecce Ancilla Domini!
Figure: Angel, standing,
presenting a lily to the virgin, who is seated on a bed.
Window frames the angel's head
Note: The fourth complete sentence on page 21 ["A scanty
blue curtain ..."] contains a typographical error: a premature period (.)
following the word "chambers."
it be just to say more of his influence on that much
misrepresented company than admits his leadership
in regard to the pathetic expression of a
religious ideal. Each of the three distinguished
painters whom the world now recognizes (at the
time
Ecce Ancilla Domini!
was in hand
James Collinson had to be reckoned with), so
completely followed his own devices, that after a
year or two, Rossetti was Rossetti alone, and
hardly any traces of his genius are to be found
except on his own canvases. Millais, at least, gave
the painter some help in working out the highly
spiritualised ideal, which may be described as
follows. In a chamber, whose pure white sides and
floor exhibit an intensity of soft morning light, the
couch of Mary, itself almost entirely white, is
placed close to the wall where dawn would strike
its earliest rays, and with its head towards the
window. A scanty blue curtain shaded the face of
the sleeper; behind, attached to the wall, a lamp
(such as in antique chambers. was rarely
extinguished, and supposed efficacious against evil
spirits) is still alight, although it is broad day
without, and the sun reveals the tree growing close
to the opening. At the foot of the couch, Mary's
embroidery frame, with a lily unfinished on the
bright red cloth which was the sole piece of strong
colour in the picture, bespeaks one of those
domestic occupations painters have agreed to
ascribe to the Maiden Mother. As the subjective
incident of the work is the Annunciation, Rossetti
intends us to suppose that the Virgin was aroused
from sleep, if not from prayer, when the gentlest of
the archangels appeared, the light of Heaven filled
the room, and the words “
Ecce Ancilla
Domini!
” were uttered by Mary in submission
to her lot; for it is manifest that
The Girlhood
of Mary, Virgin
, was intended to show her in a
state of mystical pre-cognition, as became the
sequence of the subjects.
How original were the views of Rossetti in
respect to the treatment of this wonderfully
difficult theme will appear when we remember
how other masters had treated it. The Virgins
Annunciate of Angelico, Memmi, Taddeo Bartoli,
Fra Bartolommeo and others, were, as the
Portfolio has already pointed out, generally
handsomely clad, if not crowned and jewelled, and
most of them are enthroned under arched canopies,
adorned with sculptures. The Flemings and
Germans went beyond this, and expended all the
resources of their skill on Mary's
Note: The third complete sentence on page 22 ["It suited
Rossetti's views ..."] contains a typographic error: there is no
final punctuation mark.
brocade, precious stones, goldsmithery, and even
the illuminations of the sumptuous breviary they
bestowed upon her. Rossetti gave her no
ornaments, except the gilded nimbus, which, as in
other pictures, glows round her hair and was
kindled as the angel spoke. She is covered from
head to foot-heel by a simple robe of lawn, leaving
her arms bare, and her dark auburn tresses fall on
her shoulders, and, like the contour of her bust and
limbs, have not the amplitude of womanhood. It
suited Rossetti's views of his subject that the
Virgin, who is almost girlish in her slenderness,
should have but lately passed out of the adolescent
state into a riper one Fra Angelico, whose designs
of the
Rosa
Mystica
are the chastest and
most original of all, witness the lovely
Annunciation of St. Marco's convent and
that other which Sir F. Burton has lately acquired
for the National Gallery, never produced a maiden
more passionless than this; her earnest and
reverent eyes brood, not without knowledge of the
pain to come (a point which had been made of
yore), upon the meaning of Gabriel's salutation;
while awestruck, but not over-powered, she shrinks against the wall, whose whiteness
differentiates the candour of her raiment, and
contrasts with the lustrous aureole of metallic gold
which incloses the dark warmth of her tresses—the
unbound condition of which has, of course, a
meaning all readers recognize in relation to the
Dove which, as in all early pictures of the
Annunciation, descends from above, hovers
towards Mary, and is indicated by the declaration
of the Angelic harbinger. Nearly all the more
ancient pictures of the Italian, German, and Low
Country Schools, not less than cognate sculptured
representations of this subject, give magnificent if
not royal habiliments—sometimes even (as if the
gentle Gabriel were the warlike Michael)
archangelic coronets, armour, and weapons to the
harbinger of Heaven when appearing to Mary. He
is usually winged, and his vast pinions, glittering in
gold, azure and vermilion, and
semée
with stars, reach from his superb tiara to the
floor. A stupendous design by Holbein gives a
Gabriel all glorious to behold, with pinions such as
we seem to hear rustling; while in a voice mighty
but subdued, he, robed like the Kaiser and
grasping the sceptre of his Archangelhood, delivers
his message to a round-eyed and plump Jungfrau
very different from Rossetti's, while the fattest of
doves appears between the imperial angel and the
ponderous maiden. These
figures indicate a motive quite other than that here
in question, in which the stalwart, wingless
harbinger, who is simply clad in white from
radiant head to fiery feet, and holds the lily—an
emblem and a sceptre in one—which it is his duty
to deliver to Mary, approaches her with a calm and
passionless face, which assorts with his noble,
unmoved, and undemonstrative air, as he stands
erect, and—unlike the Gabriels of Angelico,
Memmi, Dürer, Del Sarto, Raphael,
Giovanni Santi, Tintoret and Rembrandt—makes
no obeisance to Mary, not yet crowned Queen of
Heaven. In Tintoret's picture Gabriel rushes into
the stately chamber of the Virgin as if on the wings
of a whirlwind, and a host of angels follow him to
witness the event. There is a second superb design
of Holbein (now in the collection of Mr. Fisher of
Midhurst) in which the grand angel, with a world
of draperies flying in his haste, enters before the
kneeling and tremulous Virgin, while his sword-like
pinions are fully displayed as he grasps a long
sceptre with one hand, and, with the other
extended in a minatory way, speaks as in a voice of
thunder.
This picture was begun and finished in the
squalid Cleveland Street studio. The face of Mary
was a just and true likeness of Rossetti's sister, and
was painted with hardly any alteration of her
features or expression. The face of Gabriel was
mostly founded on that of Woolner, whose hair
supplied the characteristic form and colour of the
archangel's. The nimbus of the archangel is
proper to Rossetti's masterpiece like the other
emblematic lustres of the design, while there is
special significance in the fiery feet of the
Messenger of God. The idea of the Annunciation
as a mystery, thus illustrated by the namesake of
the Harbinger is imperfectly appreciated without
recognition of the character of the fire
streaming from the feet of the Messenger of Peace
as he approached the earth.
While—not without struggles and efforts
innumerable and gallant, for Rossetti's technique
was, in 1849, in a somewhat uncertain and
tentative condition—this picture was in progress,
the
Germ
was concocted and put forth.
The first number of that amazing publication
appeared on “Magazine Day” of December, 1849.
The last number (4) was issued soon after he wrote
on
Ecce
Ancilla Domini!
the date, March, 1850. In this year the picture was No. 225 in the
Portland
Gallery, 316 Regent Street, to which place the
tenants of the Hyde Park Gallery had removed
their exhibition.
Ecce Ancilla Domini!
was
priced in the catalogue at £50. It was
returned unsold and remained on the painter's easel
till January 1853, when Mr. McCracken, a packing
agent of Belfast, who, Mr. W. Rossetti tells us, had
never seen the picture, bought it for the original
price; after his death it changed hands more than
once, including those of Mr. Heugh, with whose
collection it was in 1874 sold; for £388
10
s. it passed to the collection of Mr.
William Graham, who soon after Rossetti's death
lent it to the Academy Winter Exhibition of 1883;
at his sale in 1886 it was bought (price
£840) for the National Gallery out of a fund
bequeathed by the late Mr. John Lucas Walker. It is now No. 1210 in the Gallery.
1
It has been etched not quite successfully by M. Gaujean.
Simultaneously with the execution of
The
Girlhood of Mary, Virgin
, and in the same
dismal Cleveland Street studio above described,
Mr. Holman Hunt painted his famous
Death of
Rienzi's Brother
, which only concerns us here
because, in the rather grotesque (a term I use not
depreciatingly) face of Rienzi vowing to be
revenged on the boy's murderers, we have that
which is by much the truest portrait of D. G.
Rossetti as he appeared at that time. The pallor of
his carnations was exaggerated and made more
adust to suit the passion of the incident; but the
large, dark eyes, strongly marked dark eyebrows,
bold, dome-like forehead, the abundant long and
curling hair falling on each side of the face, and
especially the full red lips conspicuous in the
picture are, or rather were, of Rossetti to the life.
This fine and important painting having
deteriorated in a deplorable manner, has been so
much retouched as to have parted with nine-tenths
of its historical and artistic value.
Not long before it was completed Madox Brown painted a much
less startling version of Rossetti's head in his
Transcribed Footnote (page 24):
1 Here is Rossetti's opinion of his own work as
communicated to Mr. W. Bell Scott in a letter
dated “Kelmscott, June 17th, 1874. My dear
Scotus,—A little early thing of my own,
Annunciation
[this title the painter
preferred for his picture when he sold it to Mr.
McCracken], painted when I was twenty-one—sold
to Agnew at Christie's the other day (to my vast
surprise) for nearly £400. Graham has
since bought it of Agnew, and has sent it to me for
possible revision, but it is best left alone, except
just for a touch or two. Indeed my impression on
seeing it was that I couldn't do quite so well now!”
picture of
Chaucer reading the Legend of
Custance to Edward III.
, and to the present
writer described his doing so in a letter
1
dated November 21st, 1882.
The latter part of the year 1849 was not only
signalised in the manner above stated, but by the
inception of and preparation for the publication of
the
Germ
. With W. M. Rossetti for the
editor the first number comprised of Dante
Rossetti's writing
Songs of Our Household, No.
1
, a poem, and the first version of
Hand and
Soul
, a prose romance in which it is impossible to
avoid recognising the
quasi-nuptial and
deeply devout motives of
The Girlhood of
Mary, Virgin
, and
Ecce Ancilla
Domini!
as they clothed themselves anew in
words. They are both the prototypes of those
legions of poems and novelettes of which the prose
and verse romances of Mr. William Morris are the
most fortunate examples.
2
Note: The first sentence in the second footnote contains a
typographic error: it reads "The Oxford and Cambriage Magazine, ..."
Transcribed Footnote (page 25):
1 Here is part of the letter in question:
“The
Chaucer
was exhibited at the Royal Academy.
50 [No. 380, 1851], at Liverpool,
where it won the £50 prize, in 1859; at my
own exhibition [in 1865, in Pall Mall], and bought
for the public gallery at Sydney, N.S.W. When at
Liverpool it belonged to David Thomas White,
who wished to cut it up (!); so I got it back from
him in exchange for smaller work. Deverell, as you
rightly remember, sat for the page [sitting in front,
an admirable likeness of our dear boy-friend]; W.
M. Rossetti, who then had his hair [
i.e.
previous to his becoming bald], for the troubadour;
John Marshall, the great surgeon, sat for the jester.
I remember his mother's and sister's surprise! D.
G. Rossetti sat for Chaucer himself, and was the
very image of Occleve's little portrait. I began the
head of Chaucer (Rossetti and I both at the top of a
high scaffolding [in a large studio at No. 17
Newman Street, where Rossetti worked under
Brown, as before stated], he reading to me), at 11
P.M., and finished it by 4 A.M. next
morning; when daylight came it looked all right, so I
never touched it again.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 25):
2
The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine
, a
sort of reflection of the
Germ
, published a
few years later, abounds in proofs of Rossetti's
influence on Messrs. Morris and his
entourage. The first number of the
Germ
contained, besides the above, in
“
The
Seasons
”, a lovely lyric by Mr. Coventry
Patmore; Miss Christina Rossetti's versed dirge,
called “
Dream
Land
”, as well as “
An
End
” by the same; a sonnet and a review by her younger
brother; a delightfully fresh “
Sketch from Nature,”
by John L. Tupper, and Woolner's “
My Beautiful
Lady
.” In “
Hand and
Soul
”
it is easy for his
intimates to recognise the outpourings, protests,
and introspective lamentations, the doubts, self-
fears, and partial despair of his future of the author
himself, then struggling with himself to attain
means and powers sufficient for his devotion, his
hopes, and his ambition. In No. 2 of the
Germ
we
find the first version of “
The
Blessed Damosel
,” a poem which in after years
supplied a theme and subject for one of Rossetti's
most important pictures. In No. 3 he contributed
“
The
Carillon
,”
one of the fruits of a journey to
Paris and the Low Countries, and “
From the
Cliffs
,” a poem. In No. 4 his contributions were
“
Pax
Vobis
,” and “
Six Sonnets for
Pictures
“ in the Louvre and Luxembourg at Paris,
and in the Academy at Bruges.
It is time to set forth the prodigious influence
exercised in 1841 and later by the then hardly
recognized poetry of Robert Browning upon
Rossetti and the more imaginative members of that
circle of which he had already become the leader.
This could not be better illustrated than
The Laboratory.
Figure: A man and woman lean over a laboratory table. Flasks and burners visible in
foreground.
by the cut which, thanks to the courtesy of Mr.
Fairfax Murray, is now before us and entitled
The Laboratory
,
1
of which the story is that a
Transcribed Footnote (page 26):
1 The subject for this work Rossetti appears to
have found during abundant reading at the British
Museum, which, among other results, led to his
introducing himself to the author of
Paracelsus and
Sordello,
by means
of a letter expressing the highest admiration and
keenest appreciation for that poet's works, then
collected under the title of
Bells and
Pomegranates
. “
The Laboratory originally
appeared in
Hood's
Magazine
in 1844, and
was reprinted in No. VII. of
Bells and
Pomegranates
, 1845, where, no doubt, Rossetti
first met with it and numerous other pieces which
he and all his company took the highest delight in
reading, and in assimilating to their hearts' content
the “scraps of thund'rous epic lilted out” by the
painter-poet. It was with regard to poems of
Browning's that, at the time in view here, Rossetti
chiefly exercised his unrivalled power of reading
aloud and the gigantic resources of his memory.
Nearly all the P-R.B., except perhaps Collinson,
were sympathetic adepts in reading aloud, but none
of them approached Rossetti, whose musical,
modulated, and sonorous voice still rings in the
ears of those who remember with what vigour,
spirit, and poetic appreciation the dear comrade of
those days took his part in reading thus. As to his
memory of poems, that seemed inexhaustible,
when nothing was missed in the recital of a
Lay
of Ancient Rome
, a longish poem of
Tennyson, sections of Henry Taylor's
Philip
van Artevelde
, sequences of a dozen pages
each from
Paracelsus or
Sordello,
passages of Dante and other Italians faultlessly
quoted, and other poetic jewellery borrowed from
Leigh Hunt, Landor, Wordsworth, Chaucer, and
Spenser, and stored in the prodigious mind of the
poet who recited them, and was destined to add to
the wonders of English verse such treasures as
Sister
Helen
,
Jenny
, and
The
Burthen of Nineveh
. All his life Rossetti was
great in reading and reciting aloud, and continued
the practices to the last.
Court-lady of the
ancien
régime
, who had
been jilted, and become maddened by love and
furiously jealous of a fairer rival, visited in his
“devil's smithy” a lean old chemist and
poison-monger like the apothecary in Romeo and
Juliet, and by the gift of all her jewels, nay,
the kisses of her mouth, bribed that gaunt villain to
concoct a “drop.”
When he had finished the dire compound, she
cried to him as in the picture
- Is it done? Take my mask off! Nay, be not morose,
- It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close:
- The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee—
- If it hurts her; beside, can it ever hurt me?”
The original of this cut is noteworthy as the first
of Rossetti's completed works in water-colours,
materials which he had not, except tentatively, till
then employed, and because it has such a bold and
original design, and is painted in such brilliant and
strong colours that no one can regard it without surprise.
Apart from the voluptuous suggestiveness—which
was quite new from Rossetti—of the design,
the snake-like virulence of the lady's
face, the deadly passion of her clenched hand, the
eager wrath of her sudden uprising, the lovely
brilliance of her carnations—a little paled by rage
and envy, the sumptuousness of her bust, and the
livid coloration of this striking little work attest the
development of the artist in a way his biographers
have failed to observe, although these
elements are noteworthy in the highest degree.
They mark the opening of his second period,
they excel in movement as in ardour of all kinds,
remind us of Madox Brown, his true master, and,
as it appears to me,
Pages Quarrelling.
Figure: “Two young men facing each other and sparring.”
Surtees p. 220
owe much to what the designer had learnt during
a visit made in the autumn of 1849 to Paris
and the Low Countries, part of the outcome of
which were the
sonnets published in the
Germ
of 1850, that with rare poetic force
and skill commented on several masterpieces of
old art which Rossetti had studied in the Louvre
and at Bruges.
1
The
Laboratory
distinctly reflects the
intense illuminations and pure colour of Memlinc's
and Giorgione's (so-called) pictures at those places,
to which the painter had addressed the sonnets of 1849.
In the early part of the next year, he, by way of
continuing his share in the
Germ
, wrote a
tale of unhappy love intended for the fifth, or April
number thereof, but which never appeared, although
Millais etched his first plate to illustrate
Rossetti's text with the design of a lady dying while
sitting for her portrait. Neither the tale, which was
called
St. Agnes of
Intercession
, nor the
etching was finished, and the latter is now one of the
Transcribed Footnote (page 28):
1 Although it is in many respects the most
important of Rossetti's illustrations to Browning,
The Laboratory
is not the first of them.
Previous to this he had begun in pen and ink a very
elaborate and characteristic illustration to
Pippa
Passes
, in three compartments, the central one
of which, representing
“Hist!” said Kate the
Queen
, seems to have gone astray. The part
particularized was the original of a water-
colour drawing lent by Mrs. Spring Rice, as No. 12, to the
Burlington Club in 1883, and of a portion of an
unfinished picture in oil, called
The Two
Mothers
, which Mr. Hutton lent to the same
exhibition. About 1852 Rossetti drew in ink, and
gave as a keepsake to the present writer,
Taurello's first Sight of
Fortune
, Burlington
Club, No. 21, where it was wrongly dated “C.
1848.” This work derives its origin from
Sordello, and is the sole illustration to that
poem; it was designed to commemorate the giver's
and the receiver's ardent studies anent “Sordello's
delicate spirit all unstrung”.
scarcest of its kind. Rossetti, too, began
an etching to illustrate his own narrative,
but it was soon put aside. It was about this
time, or a little later, that, wanting to
improve his knowledge of perspective, a
subject of the Royal Academy curriculum to
which he had never addressed himself, he came
to me to be helped in that respect. That
D.G. Rossetti.
Figure: Head and shoulders self-portrait of Rossetti as a young man drawn
in pen and ink, almost in profile to left with eyes downcast.
he was a perfectly intelligent, but not a very
diligent learner is shown by the rough sketch
of two medieval pages quarrelling here
reproduced from among a score of such
remaining on sheets of his exercises in the
little science. Assuming the airs of a
teacher, I had complained that he neglected
his work. His reply was this sketch, intended
to show what I should incur by continuing to
grumble. The oblique lines athwart the feet
of the figures are parts of the diagram.
1
Still later, but of the same period, is
the
profile portrait of
himself
, drawn with a
pen, and here reduced from a sketch which
Rossetti gave to our friend Arthur Hughes,
whose picture of
April
Love
is one
Transcribed Footnote (page 29):
1 Rossetti had so much humour that he cared
little who, if good-naturedly, caricatured
him, and he often sketched himself in odd
circumstances and conditions. One of these
sketches, made in 1849, lies before me now,
and is ludicrously like in all its
exaggerations of a huge head clothed by masses of
dark, unkempt, curling hair, and inclosing gaunt
features, a short beard and moustache,
large, hollow and “detached”-looking
eyes; the head is set upon sloping shoulders
rounded by a slight habitual stoop, and
carried forward in an eager sort of way,
which is true to the life; the chest is
narrow, the hips are wide. The
artist's attire is the above-mentioned
long-tailed dress coat, a loose dress
waistcoat, and loose trousers. The sketch
attests Rossetti's manner of gripping with
his half-clenched fingers the cuff of his
coat—a spasmodic habit which was highly
characteristic of his nervous,
self-concentrated temperament. Much the best
description of Rossetti at this period is Mr.
Holman Hunt's account of himself and “The
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood”, printed in the
Contemporary
Review
, vol. xlix., p.
737; the best portrait of him, apart from the
already-mentioned and somewhat exaggerated
head of Rienzi, is that of the guest, who in
Millais'
Lorenzo and
Isabella
is
drinking from a wine-glass; here the pallor
of the sitter's face is overdone, but the
likeness is otherwise perfect. Mr. W. M.
Rossetti sat for Lorenzo in this picture.
of the most tender-hearted and subtle
love-poems in the world, an idyl of ineffable
pathos and sweetness.
In 1850 Rossetti completed the famous
drawing in ink with a pen, entitled
Hesterna
Rosa
, which illustrates the song, pregnant
of sorrow and shame, of Elena, the mistress of
Philip van Artevelde, in Sir Henry Taylor's
noble drama. The motto of
Hesterna Rosa
is:—
- Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife
- To heart of neither wife nor maid,
- “Lead we not here a jolly life
- Betwixt the shine and shade?”
- Quoth heart of neither maid nor wife
- To tongue of neither wife nor maid,
- “Thou wag'st, but I am worn with strife,
- And feel like flowers that fade!”
The scene is a tent pitched in a
pleasaunce and, though a pallid dawn gathers
force among the trees, still lit by lamps
from within, so that the gaunt and ghostlike
shadows of a party of revellers seated in
front of the design flicker and start
ominously upon the canvas walls. One gambler
is seated on a couch and throwing dice upon a
stool placed before the group, while his
companion kneels opposite and, with a
goat-like action, draws between his lips the
finger of his mistress, the singer, and
Hesterna Rosa
of the design, who, half
hiding her face with her disengaged hand,
sits behind him. He is waiting the cast of
his companion's dice and will, in turn, throw
his own dice upon the stool. Another girl,
the mistress of the former, sits above him on
the couch, and while she seems to be chanting
a merry, perhaps ribald, song, has thrown her
bare and beautiful arms about his neck. Near
them, on our left, is a young girl holding to
her ear, as if to catch the lowest throbbing
of its notes, a sort of lute, while on the
other side is a huge ape, grossly scratching
himself, and thus intended to repeat the
sensual half of the
motif of the
design, just as the lute-player repeats the
sadder, less degraded pathos of the other
half.
IN 1851 we find Rossetti removed
to a studio on the first floor at No. 72, Newman
Street, and in his art likewise removed from
those hide-binding influences which
inexperience forced upon him in Cleveland
Street. The
Germ
having changed its
name with the third number to
Art and
Poetry
, had come to an end, and with it
the central point, so to say, of our subject's
life had shifted from the religious and
mystical purposes of his first period to
those intensely dramatic and romantic, and
sometimes voluptuous, impulses which
The
Laboratory
heralded and illustrated. The
last-named year produced, besides smaller
examples of less account, a fine and
masculine drawing in ink, now the property of
Mr. Coventry Patmore and called
The
Parable Of Love
, where a lady sits at an
easel painting her own portrait, while her
lover, stooping over her, guides her hand
with his own. The motives and style of this
example, which has never been engraved or
copied, have even more fibre than those of
The Laboratory
. The lover is a
portrait of Woolner. To be grouped with it is
Mr. Boyce's brilliant and powerful drawing in
water colours, called
Borgia
, for
which the design in ink dates in 1850. This
little piece measures only 9 1/2 x 10 inches,
but it has that largeness of style we
appreciate highly in an old master, and a
brilliant and powerful coloration as well as
vivid and finely harmonised colours proper,
especially a rich amber and a strong black,
which latter is thus, for the first time,
found in Rossetti's work, and a potent
element in the well conceived chiaroscuro of
the whole. Lucrezia Borgia is seated on a
couch playing on a lute to the sound of which
a boy and a girl are dancing with wonderful
spirit and energy; behind the sumptuously
developed and splendidly clad dame sit the
infamous Pope Alexander VI. and her brother
Cæsar. The latter is blowing the
rose-petals from amid the labyrinth of his
sister's hair,
gazing eagerly at her, and with his dagger
beating time to the music upon a half-filled
wineglass at his side. Belonging to the same
group as
Borgia
, and the property of
the same distinguished water-colour painter
and friend of Rossetti, is the original
drawing in ink with a pen, styled
How they
Met Themselves
, an impressive
illustration of the ancient German legends
anent the
Döppelgänger,
which is here reproduced from one of the two
water-colour versions, painted in 1864. It is
now in the possession of Mr. Pepys Cockerell,
and was developed from the original.
Two lovers are walking in a twilight
wood when they are suddenly confronted by
their own apparitions portending death; she
sinking to the earth, stretches out her arms
as if appealing for mercy, while he, bolder
but overawed, lays his hand upon his sword.
Dramatic as it is, this design is not so
virile and pathetic as the original drawing.
Giotto Painting the
Portrait of Dante
is the most vigorous and apt example of 1852,
and with an extraordinary sense of style and
largeness in design represents the great
Florentine master whom (because of the
majestic simplicity of his motives and
compositions) of all the old painters
Rossetti most affected, sitting on a scaffold
erected before a wall in the Bargello at
Florence and in the act of painting that
likeness of Dante, which, having been
discovered by Mr. Kirkup in 1839, is still
visible there. The austere poet is placed in
a chair, with his knees crossed; he holds a
pomegranate and maintains a dreamy,
self-absorbed expression; Cimabue stands near
Giotto and looks at his fellow painter's
work; Guido Cavalcanti is behind his fellow
poet; below, upon the pavement of the chapel,
we see Beatrice in a procession of
worshippers. This picture is in water colours
and has all the freshness and brightness,
with some of the dryness, of a fresco. The
text of Dante's
Purgatorio, c. xi.
beginning
- Credette Cimabue nella pintura
- Tener lo campo,”—
is most aptly illustrated by this noble
design.
1
Transcribed Footnote (page 32):
1 A sketch for it was shown, a most
exceptional circumstance with regard to a
Rossetti, as No. 7, in a “Winter Exhibition of
Drawings and Sketches at 121 Pall Mall, 1852”;
with it were his
Beatrice meeting Dante at
a Marriage Feast
(196), and
A Sketch
for a Portrait in Venetian Costume
(20).
It appears that Rossetti's offered
contributions to a preceding exhibition of
the same series, which was held in 1851 at
the gallery of the Old Water-Colour Society,
had been, as he said, “kicked out of the
precious place in Pall Mall.”
How they Met themselves.
Figure: “A pair of lovers meet their doubles,
outlined in light, in a wood at twilight—a sure presage of
death.”
Surtees p. 74
It is certain that prices for Rossetti's
pictures did not at this time “rule
high.” On the contrary we learn that
in April, 1853, Mr. McCracken of Belfast, our
painter's staunch admirer, gave him the sum of
£35 for the masterpiece called
Dante
on the Anniversary of Beatrice's Death
,
of which a plate from the water colour
drawing in the late Mrs. Combe's collection,
recently given to the University of Oxford,
is now before the reader.
The print shows the motives, design,
and composition of the picture, but no
reproduction in black and white can give an
adequate idea of its subtlety, brilliancy,
and colour. The subject was thus quoted by
Rossetti himself from Dante's
Vita
Nuova
, a mine of mystical, introspective
and suggestive matter to which at this time
the painter, more than before or since,
devoted his attention with great energy.
1 His ideal mistress being dead, Dante wrote, “On
that day which completed the year since my
lady had been made [one] of the citizens of
Eternal Life, I was sitting in a place apart,
where, remembering me of her, I was drawing
an angel upon certain tablets, and as I drew,
I turned my eyes and saw beside me persons to
whom it was fitting to do honour, and who
were looking at what I did : and, according as
it was told to me afterwards, they had been
there a while before I perceived them.
Observing whom, I rose for salutation and
said, ‘Another was present with
me.’ ” In the design Dante is
kneeling before a window opening above
the Arno and Florence, and upon
the sill of which stand bottles of pigments
for painting, likewise a significant
pomegranate, while, beneath the sill, lies
with other things the quaint lute alluded to
in the previous note upon “Hesterna
Rosa.” Dante—his attention being
called from his task by the officious friend who
introduced “certain people of importance” his
visitors,—the impression of sorrowful thought still
lingering in his eyes,—turns to look at the
latter, who are an elderly magnate and his
fair, tall and stately daughter. The father's
action indicates that he would fain check the
intrusive action of the busybody, while the
lady, one
Transcribed Footnote (page 34):
1 Browning, too, in his “One Word More, published in
Men and Women,
1855, ii. 229,
sympathetically treated this subject.
Dante on the Anniversary of Beatrice's Death.
D.G. Rossetti, pinx.
Walter L. Colls. Ph. Sc.
Figure: Three visitors stand near the seated Dante, one man clasps his shoulder. Dark
interior highlighted by the bright light shining through the window behind Dante.
Surtees p. 22
of her hands clasping the senior's hand, thus
expresses her sympathy with the sorrow of
Dante and her tender regret that he has been
disturbed. Among the objects within the room
are an hour-glass with its sand more than
half run down, a flowering lily stem, a
convex mirror (the existence of which at this
time is challengeable), a votive picture of
the Virgin and Child, and round the wall, a
row of the heads of cherubs who, like
- “Carvèd angels, ever eager-eyed,
- Stared, where upon their heads the cornice rests,
- With hair blown back, and wings put cross-wise on their
breasts.”
Outside the chamber and beyond the
half-withdrawn
portière we see a
closet with a brass cistern suspended over
a basin for washing hands, one of those quite
“impracticable”
staircases which, as with his musical
instruments, were the despair of the
specialists, and, farther off, a serene
landscape, comprising a sunlit meadow, a
shadowy wood, and, overhead, that brooding,
softly-glowing firmament, which, with
Rossetti as with other poet-painters, attests
the perfect peace of a Paradise beyond the
grave. In this way the artist took us from
the busy Arno, past the dim, half-lighted
room where Dante sojourned with his grief,
and through the narrow pass of Death,
whose purifying function is indicated by the
basin and its appurtenances, until, remote
but bright, the pleasaunce of Eternity is
discovered to be “beyond the
veil,” which is represented by
the
portière.
As in the picture before us, the
often-mentioned Miss Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, who
afterwards became Mrs. Dante G. Rossetti,
appears for the first time in the figure of
the compassionate lady, a few lines
concerning her may be acceptable. Some time
late in 1850 Walter Deverell, going with his
mother to a then renowned bonnet-maker's
“establishment” in Cranbourne Street
(then called an “alley”), and being
dreadfully bored while the lady discussed a new
purchase with the principal, happened in his boyish and
restless mood to glance wearily along the
counter to where, in the background of the
shop, a group of assistants could be seen
diligently building head-gear of the latest
mode. Among these damsels sat one
conspicuous by a rare sort of comeliness,
tall, elegant, lithe, slim-waisted, not
exuberant nor otherwise of the order
Rossetti afterwards affected, as in the
Venus Verticordia
and other sumptuous
visions to which we shall come presently, but
precisely of the type we recognize in the
compassionate visitor of Dante. Her abundant
hair was of a darkish auburn-brown, with
golden threads entwined, and bound compactly
about her rather small and well-shaped head,
which nature poised in graceful ease upon a
“neck like a tower,” as Rossetti
said about that royal charm of one of the beauties
his fancy had created. Her carnations, “rather
pale than wan,” were not without freckles
Deverell at a distance did not see, but,
under these spots of the sun, her fine skin was
even-tinted and smooth, while her features
were as choicely modelled as those of an
Italian
cinque-cento bronze of the
purest kind. In a moment “our dear
boy,” as all his friends called Deverell,
was on fire to paint this strangely found beauty
as Viola in a picture of
Twelfth Night
he had
in hand, and for whom the model must needs be
filled with an inward and spiritual grace and
modesty. For Walter to ask was to command
his mother, and that lady exerted herself so
successfully with the bonnet-maker, the
damsel, and her father—who was a watchmaker
originally from Sheffield and then settled
somewhere in the Newington Butts region—that
the desired sittings were granted to Deverell,
who, poor fellow, dying young, never did the
maiden justice, nor quite carried out his
meaning in the picture. Soon after this
Rossetti persuaded Miss Siddall to
sit to him in turn, and thus began a close
relationship, including Rossetti's falling in
love with his model, their engagement in or
about 1853, and his marrying her in May,
1860. Her death, in lamentable circumstances
and some time after childbearing, occurred
through an over-dose of laudanum,
inadvertantly taken to relieve the agonies of
neuralgia. This pain was a symptom of that
phthisis which had long threatened the life
of the ill-starred Mrs. D. G. Rossetti. Here
reproduced is a sketch of her, made by her
husband at a later date (?
c. 1859)
than that to which we have arrived, and now
the property of Mr. Fairfax Murray, who
kindly lent the original for reproduction.
Naturally, Rossetti made countless sketches
and studies from his wife, and not seldom
included her in his pictures, as in
Regina
Cordium
, 1861. Several of these examples
were at the Burlington Club, 1883; many more
at the Rossetti sale at Christie's, May 12,
1883.
One of the most interesting pictures
produced, or rather left incom-
plete, by Rossetti is that to which the
progress of time and this narrative brings us
with the year 1853. It is a work anent which,
more than any other by our master, numerous
erroneous statements have been made, and yet,
Found
, of the original pen drawing in
ink of which, thanks to Mr. Fairfax Murray,
the reader has a capital reproduction, is a
noteworthy instance of Rossetti having for
the nonce departed out of his then accustomed
pietistic and romantic moods and entered upon
a moral
The Artist's Wife.
Figure: “Nearly whole-length, seated in a chair, full face, wearing a cloak.”
Surtees p. 196
and modern application of design.
Although an entirely original work, and, in
the touching, simple and veracious nature of
its theme, far superior to Mr. Holman Hunt's
somewhat analogous production,
The
Awakening Conscience
, which preceded it
before the public, it is difficult to avoid
thinking that the moving and terrible story
of the latter work had not much to do with
turning Rossetti's attention to, and insuring
his sympathy for unhappy women of the class
with the fate of whom both these pictures are
concerned. Rossetti must have seen it, and
could not but be deeply touched. The theme,
as well as the intensely realistic treatment
of
Found
are completely
“Huntean” and remote from Rossetti's
mood, which was, if the truth be said, rather
over-scornful of didactic art, and thoroughly
indisposed towards attempts to ameliorate anybody's
condition by means of pictures.
The incident Rossetti imagined
follows, as it were, in a natural sequence
that of Mr. Hunt's invention. The latter
implied a seduced woman in the house of her
seducer; the former shows her deserted,
expelled, and, whether self-wrecked or not, a
wanderer in the streets of London, while we
may suppose the grim Nemesis of her sex was
leading
her towards a veritable Bridge of Sighs,
where it was but too likely the fate of
Hood's
Note: Quotation centered.
- “One more unfortunate,
- Even God's providence
- Seeming estranged,”
awaited her. The time was soon after the
chilly silvery dawn had dispersed the gloom
which concealed the victim, and there was
light enough to reveal her form to the young
countryman, who, driving townwards to market,
no sooner saw the still fair face set in pale
golden hair than he recognized the once pure
maiden, formerly his betrothed, who, years
before, had left his village and was lost in
London. Leaping from the cart he seized the
girl's hands and held her firmly, while
shrinking to the ground, she struggled and
turned her face away in vain. Beyond this the
design tells its own story and we may leave
it so, adding, however, that it illustrates
the motto “I remember thee; the kindness of
thy youth, the love of thy betrothal,”
Jerem.
ii. 2, with
which it is inscribed.
Rossetti's original idea is expressed in
the drawing now before us and
some time in 1854 he, having made studies for
parts of it, seems to have begun, or intended
to begin, the work on the canvas. Several of
the studies, squared for transferring, were
included in the painter's sale. He did not
get very far with the picture, the stringency
of naturalistic painting not suiting his mood
nor his experience. It was taken up at
intervals of years, was commissioned by Mr.
Leathart of Gateshead, but, not advancing,
never reached that gentleman's hands; was
revived in 1870, again in 1880, and
commissioned again by Mr. W. Graham. As it
happened, although part of the background was,
after Rossetti's death, put in by another
hand,
Found
was never finished as the
painter meant it should have been. Despite
some disproportions, questionable perspective
and inequalities of details, it remains a
masterpiece of poetry with exquisite parts.
It is hardly needful to point out to those
who have observed the allusive wealth of
incidents in
Dante on the Anniversary of
Beatrice's Death
, that
Found
abounds in similar details. Among these are
that the girl crouches against the wall of a
churchyard—“where the wicked cease from
troubling, and the weary are at rest”; that
the brightening dawn symbolizes, as it may
be, peace (with forgiveness) on earth, or in
Found.
D.G. Rossetti, pinx.
Walter L. Colls. Ph. Sc.
Figure: “The subject is that of a farmer bringing his cart in the
early morning over Blackfriars Bridge to a London market and coming
upon a woman of the streets whom he had once loved, kneeling against a brick
wall.”
Surtees p. 28-29
Heaven, after sorrow; while the calf
trammelled in the net, and, helpless, carried
in the cart to its death, points to the past
and present life of the girl. This allusion is the least happy of Rossetti's
“moralities,” because, unlike the harmless
beast, the woman had betrayed every one—father,
mother, brother, and even the lover
who had trusted her.
1
Rossetti, who was in fairly good
health at the time in question, and depressed
rather than permanently defeated by the fate
of
Found
, now for a while continued
to design and paint in water colours,
inventing his own subjects entirely, or, when
older themes were adopted, giving them the
new life and light of the genius which
informed them with fresh fire, and left
little but the title which was not his own.
These themes were mostly romantic and dashed
with mysticism, and they frequently referred
to legends of the Arthurian cycle, the
too-often dry bones and rickety whimsicalities of
which Rossetti never failed to vivify, while
he glorified them with light and colour.
Apart from them,—and yet not quite distinct
from the romantic class proper as to their
poetic motives and technical treatment,—is a
fine series derived from Dante, which
occupied Rossetti during 1854 and 1855. Of
this number the triptych of
Paolo and
Francesca
, which Mr. Ruskin coveted
intensely and bought, is to be reckoned. As
it resembles a later version of the same
subject, dated 1862, and introduced in this
text, it is expedient to pass on to
The
Passover in the Holy Family
, now at
Oxford, the gift of the author of
Modern
Painters
, which represents the porch of
the house
Transcribed Footnote (page 39):
1 It is believed that the difficulties
attending the completion of
Found
in
the oil medium (with which he was then
temporarily less accustomed to deal), and the
sharp disappointment attending those
difficulties, had a good deal to do with the
changes of his mood and that
“detachedness” which grew upon
him from this time. Engaged to marry Miss
Siddall, and deeply in love with her, he
could not but suffer while her health
was frequently broken. When the time
for their wedding approached, in May, 1860,
Rossetti caused the wall between Nos. 14 and
13 in Chatham Place to be broken through, and
thenceforth he occupied, as in a modern flat,
the second-floors in both houses. There, in
February, 1862, after a very brief period of
wedded union, his wife died, after which he
remained no longer than, with an interval of
lodging in Lincoln's Inn Fields, sufficed to
secure the mansion called Tudor House, No.
16, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where he settled in
October, 1862, and where all his later
pictures that were painted in London were
executed, and of which he remained the tenant
till his death. It may be added that one of
the best likenesses of Miss Siddall is the
face of Sylvia in Mr. Holman Hunt's
Valentine Rescuing
Sylvia
, painted in
1850-51.
of Joseph, as Rossetti conceived it, with
Zacharias sprinkling the door-posts with symbolical blood held in a bowl
by the boy Jesus, while, stooping at the feet of the
latter, St. John is, according to his own
declaration, fastening the shoe-latchet of
the Saviour. “And Mary culls the bitter
herbs ordained.” Although never quite
finished, this is a very pure, delicate and
brilliant piece, with motives at once
reverent and tender, and as Mr. Ruskin
noticed, exceptionally realistic in
treatment. Probably efforts made with regard
to
Found
had influenced the artist to
follow nature in this respect. There appears
(the accounts are very confusing) to be more
than one version of this example; the subject
Rossetti described in one of his
Sonnets
for Pictures
,
Poems
, 1870, p.266.
The design, combining mysticism with types
prophetic, is truly in the artist's
characteristic vein. After this came the
very different
Lancelot and Guinevere at
the Tomb of Arthur
, a brilliant study of
sunlight in an apple orchard, where, under
the fruit-laden trees (here introduced
significantly), lies the altar-tomb of King
Arthur, with his effigies all in armour lying
upon it, while the queen, habited as a nun of
Glastonbury, and her quondam lover, clad in
helmet and mail, have met and hold discourse
about their former lives and sins.
1
It was in 1856 Rossetti made five
designs to illustrate
Poems by Alfred
Tennyson
, which Moxon and Co. published
in the following year, an event that, for the
first time, really introduced our painter to
the public at large. They are works of very
great beauty, merit, and spirit, and
represent
Lancelot looking on the dead
Lady of Shalott
,
Mariana in the
South
,
The Palace of Art (two
examples), and
Sir
Galahad
. Their style, not less than their treatment, is
thoroughly original, picturesque, and
masculine, and quite different from any of
the other illustrations in the volume.
2 Their history is well told in his brother's book.
Some, if not
Transcribed Footnote (page 40):
1 Mr. W. Morris's fiery-hearted poem,
King
Arthur's Tomb
, included with
The
Defence of Guinevere
, 1858, illustrates
the subject Rossetti chose for his drawing,
and owed existence to it. While the
catalogues refer to the
Morte Arthur
as the authority for the subject, I have not,
although the first to describe the incident
to Rossetti, been able to find anything about
it in that wilderness of romance.
Transcribed Footnote (page 40):
2 Being drawn on the blocks direct, the
original designs were unfortunately,
photography not then being applied to save
them, cut away by the engraver. Photographs
of these originals, showing how much had been
lost in the cutting, were, happily, taken
from the blocks in their pristine condition.
Such photographs were included in a limited
exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite works which was
formed in 1857 at the then No. 4, Russell
Place, Fitzroy Square (now incorporated with
Charlotte Street). This exhibition had of
Rossetti's works, besides the five
photographs,
Dante's Dream at the Time of
the Death of Beatrice
, an early version
of the great picture now at Liverpool;
The
Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice
, of
which a plate is before the reader of this
text; an unnamed example,
Mary
Nazarene
;
Mary Magdalene
; Mr.
Ruskin's drawing;
The Blue
Closet
, Mr.
Rae's beautiful picture, soon to be described
in these pages, and
Hesterna Rosa
. The
exhibition continued for a short time only,
and had nothing to do with that of the
original Hogarth Club, of 178, Piccadilly,
and later, 6, Waterloo Place, which was not
formed till June, 1858, when a similar
exhibition to the above was set up. These
designs for woodcuts were not the first of
Rossetti's making; that distinction belongs
to a charming illustration of Mr. Allingham's
“Maids of Elfin
Mere,” published
with
The Music
Master
, 1855, and very
much injured in the cutting. It represents
three damsels clothed in white, who came
- “With their spindles every night;
- Two and one, and three fair maidens,
- Spinning to a pulsing cadence,
- Singing songs of Elfen-mere.”
all these examples, Rossetti repeated in
water-colours, and thus doubly extended his
now growing reputation.
The
Blue Closet
,
a water-colour drawing executed for Mr.
W. Morris, and now in the possession of Mr.
George Rae of Birkenhead, belongs to 1857,
and is one of the most romantic and, of its
kind, subtlest of the artist's
“inventions,” which, in the justest
and strictest sense of the term, it is. It is
hardly necessary to say that the poet-painter had
already made the colours of his pictures harmonize with
their pathos, this he did even when designing
the coloration of
Ecce Ancilla Domini!
in varieties of virginal white, giving the
Venetian voluptuousness of Mr. Boyce's
Borgia
in sensuous splendours of
diversely repeated reds, blacks, and yellows,
and in the presageful gloom and terror of
How they Met
themselves
, all haggard
and woebegone, in the darkness of the
shadow-haunted wood, and in the colours of the
lover's dresses. Such harmony of subject and
treatment is manifest in Mr. Rae's
Blue
Closet
, an exercise intended to symbolize
the association of colour with music. Four
damsels appear in the composition, two of
whom sing. Their dresses are respectively
subdued purple and black, and pure emerald
green and white. They occupy the rear of the
group. The other pair are instrumentalists,
and play on a double-keyed clavichord (a sort
of a dulcimer) placed between them, while the
one pinches the strings of a lute at her
side, and her companion pulls the string of a
little bell hanging
next to the lute. The chief colours of the
foreground and its figures are those of the
black-and-gold tapestry over the clavichord,
the gold of the musical instruments, the
white and crimson of the lute-player's
garments, the scarlet, green, and white of
those of her companion. As to the association
of colour with music—of which this drawing
is a subtle instance, more recondite than any
of those examples where several old masters,
and especially Rossetti himself, had made the
coloration of their pictures subserve the pathetic
expressiveness of their subjects—we
may notice that the sharp accents of the
scarlet and green seem to go with the sound
of the bell; the softer crimson, purple, and
white accord with the throbbing notes of the
lute and the clavichord, while the dulcet,
flute-like voices of the girls appear to
agree with those azure tiles on the walls and
floor which gave to this fascinating drawing
its name of
The Blue
Closet
.
The
Wedding of St. George
, another design in
water-colours, likewise belonging to Mr. Rae,
gives play of colour with sharp notes of red,
yellow, and blue in contrast, and thus
suggests the clashing of the joy-bells
hanging in the background, which are struck
with hammers by two very quaint attendant
angels. The lovers are embracing after the
combat which has delivered the lady from the
clutches of the dragon. St. George's gilded
corselet glows under his surcoat of scarlet,
and the Princess's black tresses stream past
her ardent face as she nestles to his breast.
The champion's brooding looks (he was
probably painted from Mr. W. Morris) indicate
the danger he has undergone; while the green
and scaly head of the dragon, with red eyes
of wrathful bloodthirstiness, is, as Rossetti
was wont to say, conveniently packed in a
case for despatch to Cappadocia.
The next illustration of our
narrative finds a place here. It represents
the prison scene in
Faust, where the
hero of Goethe's drama goes to the cell
where, waiting an ignominious death because
she had murdered her infant, Margaret is
confined. By the aid of Mephistopheles he had
provided means for her escape, but she,
maddened by terror and love, passionately
embraces him, and neglects his entreaties
that she would seize the opportunity for
flight. At the last moment the Tempter
appears, as in the design, and vainly urges
that it will soon be too late, and the
executioners will arrive. The drawing has
been kindly lent by Mr. Arthur Hughes, to
whom Rossetti gave it long ago.
The Damsel of the
Sangrael
refers to
the picture in the Union Room at Oxford, as described
below, and now comes under notice. It was painted for Mr. W.
Morris in 1857, and now belongs to Mr. Rae, to whom we owe
much for leave to reproduce a characteristic work of the
period in question, when Rossetti was deeply interested
in the
Mort
Arthur
,
Margaret and Faust.
Figure:
“In the prison cell; Faust is leaning against the right wall with his
arms open clasping Margaret by the hands as she leans toward him with arms
extended. Mephistopheles on the left is descending the prison
steps.”
Surtees p. 48
of which, apart from Mr. Morris's passion for
that romance, the nebulous splendours and
fervours exactly suited the mood of the
painter. The drawing shows a full-length
figure of a damsel with dreamy eyes and com-
The San Grael.
Figure:
“[The damsel] stands whole-length to front with hair
outspread, holding in her left hand a long-stemmed cup and
a basket of bread covered with a little white napkin; her
right hand is raised in blessing. The Holy Dove bearing a
censer in its beak has come to rest above her head.”
Surtees p. 51
posed lips, standing erect and still, and as
if aloof from the world, her tresses
spreading wide upon her shoulders, while she
holds in one hand the sacramental cup, that
very chalice of the raptures of Sir Galahad
and his comrades of the Round Table, implying
the
- “Blessed Vision, Blood of God!”
which the champions sought to find somewhere
upon this earth. It is a “romantic”
(the painter's own term), rather than a mystically
inspired version of a theme which hardly
lends itself to art, and it is difficult to
believe that Rossetti spontaneously attempted
to deal with it.
In the next cuts the reader has
transcripts of some original designs, which
Mr. Fairfax Murray has kindly lent, for one
of the unfortunate pictures painted in 1857—8
on the walls of the Union Debating Society's
Room at Oxford. Seeing that the walls were
intended to be left bare, or at best, clothed
in detestable stucco, Rossetti, who had long
been ambitious of distinguishing himself in
mural decoration on a larger scale, offered
to enrich them with pictures associated with
legends of the Arthurian cycle, such as have
been referred to here. His offer, some
preliminary difficulties being got over, was
accepted, although it was of the most extreme
rashness. It was impelled by a rare
enthusiasm, and, because of the artist's
absolute inexperience in painting otherwise
than in oil or water-colours, was exceedingly
unfortunate. Neither of these
media
being admissible, Rossetti decided to adopt
distemper painting, of which, however, he
knew practically next to nothing, not so much
as concerned the right preparation of the
walls to receive the colours, nor what
pigments were trustworthy, nor how the
effects of damp, gaseous and otherwise
vitiated air upon the paintings were to be
guarded against. He procured the aid of
several brilliant artists to execute parts of
the work, and so sanguine were the company
that they actually hoped to finish in about a
month, the series of pictures comprising
numerous nearly life-size figures in
well-filled compositions.
1 The
Transcribed Footnote (page 45):
1 The artists whose enthusiasm Rossetti
raised to the highest pitch in this matter,
were Mr. E. Burne-Jones; Mr. W. Morris, of
The Earthly
Paradise
; Mr. Val Prinsep;
Mr. Arthur Hughes; and Mr. R. Spencer
Stanhope, whose devotional pictures are well
known to the world. A more brilliant company
it would, out of Paradise, be difficult to
select; but not even Mr. Hughes, who was the
best trained of the group, knew much of
distemper painting on a large scale.
efforts of six months were almost ruined
before that period was complete. At the
present time the decorations are not legible.
Rossetti's picture, which was never finished,
is not the most dilapidated of the whole; it
was intended to represent
Sir Lancelot
asleep before the Shrine of the San Grael
.
According to the legend it happened that,
because of his sinning with Queen Guinevere
the ever-victorious knight was not per-
![Sir Launcelot's Vision of the Sanc Grael. [study]](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/thumbs_big/s93b.s.jpg)
Study for Guinevere and Sir Lancelot.
Figure: “Study for Launcelot and Guenevere. Guenevere stands
with extended arms beside the apple tree, and apple in her left
hand. Launcelot is seated on the ground with bowed head and eyes
closed.”
Surtees p. 52
mitted to enter the sacred building which
held the shrine: exhausted by travel and
sorrow he rested on the earth outside that
edifice and soon fell asleep; while in this
state he dreamt that his mistress appeared to
him gorgeously arrayed, and with both arms
extended while she held to the branches of an
apple-tree, and looked at him with queenly
pride and the loving pity of an ardent
mistress who beheld the sufferings of her
knight. In the air behind this group the
Damsel of the San Grael is seen floating,
bearing the mysterious chalice that was
unattainable by the impure of heart and
frame, and refulgent in a sort of halo of
angels. In the sketches here reproduced the
reader has designs for parts of this
unfortunate picture, the splendour of which,
while it lasted, was at once fine
![Sir Launcelot's Vision of the Sanc Grael. [study]](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/thumbs_big/s93c.s.jpg)
Study for Guinevere.
Figure: “Study for Guenevere standing whole-length, arms
outstretched along the fork of an apple-tree, holding an apple
in her left hand; the upper part of her body inclined backwards
to left, the head turned three-quarters to right, eyes looking
down.”
Surtees p. 52
and intense. In one the Queen, drawn from
Miss Siddall, stands with arms extended upon
the branches of the apple-tree and
contemplates the sleeping Lancelot, some
friend or model officiating in this capacity.
It is so very like the Mr. Burne-Jones of
1857, that it was certainly
drawn from him. In the next design the
figure of Miss Siddall, as Guinevere, appears
as before holding an apple; the Damsel of the
San Grael is omitted. In the third sketch we
have the figure of the
Ancilla San
Grael
attending the death of Sir Bors and
presenting to that valiant, virtuous and holy
knight the much desired chalice and the sacred
bread.
Belonging to the same category as the
above group of sketches, is the
![Sir Launcelot's Vision of the Sanc Grael. [study]](http://www.rossettiarchive.org/img/thumbs_big/s93h.s.jpg)
Ancilla San Grael.
Figure: “Study for the Angel, holding the Bread and Chalice.“
Surtees p. 53
transcript now before us from a design for
Sir Lancelot escaping from the Chamber of
Guinevere
, which, though it is dated
1859, was probably produced during the period
of those studies in the
Mort Arthur
which bore such splendid fruit as the above
instances and
The Chapel before
the Lists
,
The Death of Breuse sans
Pitié
,
both belonging to Mr. Rae; Mr. Leathart's
Sir Galahad in the
Chapel
, and less
important works; besides two or three
potent drawings concerning St. George. Of
the subject of the work now before us it will
be remembered that the catastrophe of the
intrigue of Lancelot and his royal mistress
was brought about by the foes who surprised
the guilty pair. Some of Rossetti's friends
have not failed to detect a satirical element
in the rough sketch of
Alma Mater
, the
ungirding of a knight with a sword, which, I
understand, refers to the manner in which Mr.
Woodward, the architect of the New Museum and
the Union Room at Oxford, had been dealt with
by the University authorities.
Much of 1858 was devoted to the
execution of Rossetti's triptych
in Llandaff Cathedral, a powerful if not
quite successful work which, however, need
not detain us here. It represents
The
Saviour adored by a Shepherd and a King
;
David as a Shepherd
combating Goliath
,
and
David as
King
. In the summer of
this year the Hogarth Club, of which the
brothers Rossetti were important members, was
founded. Among its principal objects, besides
the promotion of friendly inter-
Lancelot in Guinivere's Chamber.
Figure: Launcelot bends and looks out of window, sword in hand. Queen has her back to
him, with eyes closed and hands clasped at her throat. In the background crouch several
of the queen's ladies, covering their faces.
course, was the establishment of an
exhibition room where pictures by its
artistic members could be shown in a
quasi-private manner, so that they
would not be excluded from galleries, such as
those of the Royal Academy, which declined
works the public had previously seen.
1
Transcribed Footnote (page 49):
1 This society, which must not be confused
with the existing club of the same name,
included some of the most eminent and
accomplished artists of the day. The first
meeting was held July 2nd, 1858, at 178,
Piccadilly; later, the club removed to 6,
Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, where it continued
to meet and show pictures by its members
until April 19th, 1861, when it was
dissolved. Several of Rossetti's drawings
were hung there.
One of the chief figures in the
Salutatio
Beatricis
,
which was painted
in 1859, is represented by this sketch for
the figures of
Dante meeting Beatrice in
Eden
, half of that diptych of which the
other portion illustrated
Dante meeting
Beatrice in Florence
; it was painted on a
door in the Red House, which, after designs
by Mr. Philip Webb, Mr. Morris
Alma Mater and Mr. Woodward.
Figure:
Also known as Sir Galahad and an Angel. “Sir Galahad,
standing with head bowed and
hands joined, is being armed with a sword by an angel
(or possibly ungirded?) who shelters him with outspread wings and
kisses him on the forehead.”
Surtees p. 55
built in an orchard at Upton, Bexley Heath.
This ascription is conjectural, because the
sketch may refer to the
Salutatio
Beatricis
, now in the possession of Mr.
J. Leathart, of Gateshead. Mr. Morris has
long ago parted with the Red House, and the
pictures painted there by
Rossetti; mention of these suffices to recall
the beginning of the latter's intimacy with
the poet of
The Earthly
Paradise
,
which occurred some time before the
Oxford
and Cambridge Magazine
was published in
1856, and was fortunate in bringing before
the world the glorious
Burthen of
Nineveh
, the original composition of
which dates back to when, by his reading it
aloud, that fine piece was made known to the
author's circle of close friends.
Sister
Helen
, a ballad royal if there ever was
one, followed
Dante.
Figure: “Sketch of Dante (? for the right panel)
three-quarter-length, standing in profile to left, head
downturned, shading his face with his hands.”
Surtees p. 73
in about 1855, and was read in
the same manner, but during the succeeding
years, until 1880, or thereabouts, this poem
continued to be improved. Most of Rossetti's
more important pictures were, so to say, set
in sonnets some of which are of priceless
beauty, delightful in their colour, energy,
movement and freshness. These poems, and
especially the sonnets, are the outcome of a
genius essentially pictorial, that is to say,
a mind which saw everything—from the rose
and ivory of a woman's carnations to the
sullen splendour of a sunset—with the eyes
of a painter revelling in colour, enraptured
by the grace of a perfect curve, and capable
of exquisite and sympathetic research when
human pathetic expression was in view. In
short, most of Rossetti's poems are pictures
in words, in which respect there is a close,
though partial, resemblance between his genius
and that of Robert Browning.
The next cut is of an indefinable
date, probably
c. 1859, and with extreme
taste and felicity, represents a graceful
girl standing at a doorway and, as a sort of
Eve of later days, plucking apples from a
tree.
Lucrezia
Borgia
, executed in
1860, comes next in our illustrations, and
was thus, upon an unfinished and smaller
version of the same, described by Rossetti
himself: “
Lucrezia Borgia,
Duchessa di Bisceglia
. The subject is the poisoning
of her second husband, the Duke Alfonso
of Bisceglia. You see him in the mirror going
on crutches, and walked up and down the room
by Pope Alexander IV., to settle the dose of
poison well into his system.” Behind
those figures, as they walk in the room and are
seen in the mirror, is the bed where the
victim is to perish. Lucrezia, standing in
front, looks calmly towards them, and,
smiling to herself, deliberately washes her
hands after
Girl Plucking Fruit.
Figure:
“A girl, three-quarter-length
standing in a doorway plucking fruit from a tree; with her left
hand she holds a scarf, which falls from her head and over her
shoulders.”
Surtees p. 228
mixing the poisoned wine and placing it in the
glass vessel on the table behind her. The Pope and Duke
Alfonso are supposed to be in front of the
scene, and much about where we, as
spectators, stand, so that she looks at them,
and in her eyes there is a lurid intense
light, which is horribly fine, and this
illustrates what we have said as to the
artist's intense research where human
expression was in view. The horror of the
subject is enhanced by the magnificence of
the woman's form, its stateliness and its
beauty. In this picture there is a great
force of colour and light and shade, forming
chiaroscuro of which Giorgione might boast;
the whole is painted in a higher key than
Rossetti had, till then, generally affected;
it is solid and unusually carefully finished.
Originally exhibited at the Hogarth Club, the
completed version of
Lucrezia Borgia
,
after remaining for a time with Mr. Leathart,
passed into the collection of Mr. Rae, whose
kindness allowed its reproduction for this
text. About the same time, 1859-61, Rossetti
began and finished the bust of a young woman,
whose face, saturated with passion
Lucrezia Borgia.
Figure: A young woman stands, washing her hands in a copper basin. “[H]er eyes are directed to her husband whom she has just
poisoned, being walked up and down the room on crutches by her father....A mirror on the back wall reflects the participants
in this
grisly scene; below it stands a table on which are place a decanter of wine and a poppy...”
Surtees p. 77-78
Note: An omitted close single quote has been added after
"over that subject"
as it is, baffles description, and justifies
its title of
Bocca Baciata
, or
Lips
that have been Kissed
. Like the last it
was first exhibited at the Hogarth Club, and,
as No. 309, at the Academy's Collection of
Rossetti's Works, 1883. It is in oil, very
highly finished, and modelled to a pitch far
above the custom of modern painters. I have
long reckoned
Bocca Baciata
, although
a small example, one of the finest, as it is
once of the subtlest and most difficult, of
pictures of our age; it belongs to Mr.
Boyce, having, moreover, that peculiar
importance which attaches to the first
remarkable, if not actually the first example
of the artist's later, and much affected
custom of painting single busts and half-length
figures which, afterwards, came to be
of life-size or even larger—of women,
amorously, mystically, or moodily lost in
dreams, or absorbed by thoughts too deep for
words. In course of time a generation arose
about Rossetti who knew him only by these
startling, powerful and thoroughly original
examples, and ignored him as a painter of
genre, and dramatic and biblical
themes.
Bocca Baciata
and the Llandaff
triptych being finished, or well advanced,
Rossetti found time in 1860 to carry out in
ink the original drawing (now the property of
Mr. Boyce) of a very powerful little picture
in water colours, which, in the next year, he
finished at Chatham Place. This fine thing
now belongs to Mr. Fairfax Murray, to whom
the reader is indebted for seeing this
version of the most humorous instance of
Rossetti as a
genre painter, and wit.
Dr. W. Maxwell, a close crony of Johnson,
told, among anecdotes of his friend, which
are included in Boswell's
Johnson, that
“Two young women from Staffordshire
[Lichfield acquaintances, no doubt] visited him
[Johnson] when I was present, to consult him
on the subject of Methodism, to which they
were inclined. ‘Come,’ said he,
‘you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and
me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that
subject;’ which they did, and after dinner, he took one of
them on his knee and fondled her for half an
hour together.” Rossetti, with keen humour,
has made one of the “pretty fools”
a little piqued at the favour of fondling which
her companion obtains, while the latter, demure,
but not unmoved, sits stiffly upon the knee of the
doctor, who holds forth while he stirs his
tea; Boswell, alive to the conversation,
sips punch from a spoon, and the waiter,
leaning over the curtain of the box,
conscientiously snuffs the candle, and, while
dawn breaks in the sky with-out, seems to wish
his customers would go. Rossetti, in
introducing Boswell instead of Maxwell, did
so by an oversight, or perhaps, because
Dr. Johnson at the Mitre.
Figure: Johnson at a table with young woman sitting
stiffly on his knee
with eyes downcast, holding a teacup. Boswell leans heavily over a spoon,
and a young woman next to him inclines forward anxiously. Behind the
group, leaning from the stairs, a man lights a lamp.
a likeness of the former was easily obtained
and sure to be recognized in his picture.
In 1861, the painter, who for a long
time had had the work in hand, found himself
in a position to publish
The Early Italian
Poets from C.
D'Alcamo to Dante Alighieri
, with the
Vita
Nuova
of the latter, which is
the proper and almost indispensable
complement to the
Divina Commedia, a
sort of autobiography of Dante in his youth
and early manhood, which, as the catalogue
of Rossetti's works attests, supplied him
with texts for some important pictures, such
as the
Salutatio Beatricis
,
Beata
Beatrix
, now in the National Gallery,
Dante's Dream
, now at Liverpool,
La Donna della
Finestra
, several
of which we
have yet to consider, and
Dante on the
Anniversary of Beatrice's Death
, which
has been previously described.
The Early Italian
Poets
gave birth, so to say, in
1874, to
Dante and his
Circle
, which
included and extended the former work, and did
whatever a book can to extend and elevate
English ideas of the poetry to which it was
devoted.
1
Rossetti's remaining works of 1861
included designs for stained glass, the
logical character of which as a means of
decoration, none understood so well as he.
2
A few replicas, many studies and portraits
seem to have engaged the energies of our
painter, while his wife's frequent illnesses,
and other grave causes of distress, must have
shaken him to the heart, and were more than
enough to account for the fact that no
serious picture proceeded from his easel
until some time after his wife's death, in
February, 1862, and her burial in the
cemetery at Highgate. On the day of her
interment he placed in her coffin, by way of
sacrifice to her gentle spirit, a small
volume of poems in manuscript, the greater
number
Transcribed Footnote (page 56):
1 In the meantime, although Messrs. Smith and
Elder published the earlier volume, the
pecuniary results to the brilliant translator
and learned annotator were, as his brother
says, “on a very small scale.” A
presentation copy of the book was nevertheless
priced in a bookseller's recent catalogue at
£5 10
s.,
i.e. about sixteen times
the original sum. The volume announces
Dante
at Verona, and other Poems. By D. G. Rossetti
, as
“Shortly will be published,” a collection
which, in that form at least, never appeared.
Transcribed Footnote (page 56):
2 From the first he mastered the facts that,
unlike pictures proper, which are seen by
reflected light, paintings in glass, being
transparent, are seen by transmitted light,
and do not permit the use of modelling in
light and shade, intended to give a false
appearance of relief to that which ought to
be of the nature of a mosaic in transparent
media, with shadows, not modelled to anything
like naturalistic or imitative results.
Knowledge of this principle lies at the root
of design in this application, and yet so
dense was the ignorance of art then prevailing
among antiquaries and
cognoscenti,
that Mr. C. Winston, a great authority as to
the history of glass painting, and a first-rate
copyist of ancient windows, refused to
accept this rudimentary canon of the subject,
and sanctioned those illogical and inartistic
transparencies, which, vilely designed and
childishly executed in the picture-glass
works at Munich, offend the eyes of critics
in St. Paul's and Glasgow cathedrals. Greatly
to Rossetti's influence, though not perhaps
to his initiative (about which I am not
certain), is due the successful and brilliant
revival of art in glass, which has flourished
chiefly by means of Messrs. F. M. Brown, W.
Morris, Sir E. Burne-Jones, and a few other
competent artists and manufacturers, by which
the whole art and practice of
vitraux
have been revolutionized.
of which had been addressed to her by him,
both before and during their wedded lives of
less than two years' duration.
1
Transcribed Footnote (page 57):
1 As the leading subject of this text is the
art of Rossetti as it is manifest in some of
the more important and characteristic of his
paintings, and because it does not pretend to
be a complete biography, still less, an
account of him as a poet, it will be well to
anticipate time, and repeat what has been
often told, to the effect that while some of
the poems buried in his wife's grave existed
imperfectly in other versions, many, if not
all of them, were complete in the small
volume only. Mr. Hall Caine says that “as
one by one of his friends, Mr. Morris, Mr.
Swinburne, and others attained to
distinctions as poets, he [Rossetti] began to
hanker after poetic reputation, and to
reflect with pain and regret upon the hidden
fruits of his best efforts.” After many
searchings of the heart, as well as
promptings and encouragings from friends, the
poet determined to recover the volume from
the grave where they had been placed as if
for ever. This was done on the night of the
6th or 7th of October, 1869, and in due time
the desired verses were incorporated with
other examples, and issued as “
Poems,
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
” The honours
of the poet were instantly acknowledged by all
who had not already acknowledged them, and
were worth seeking acknowledgments from. The
volume which is now scarce, contains—besides
most of the sonnets already published in the
Germ
—the “
Blessed
Damosel
,” which is illustrated below, the
“
Burthen of
Nineveh
,” “
Dante
at Verona
” (see above), “
Jenny,”
“
Sister
Helen
,”
fifty supremely beautiful
sonnets and songs, intended to become a work
to be called
The House of
Life
(two of
these were afterwards withdrawn, although
they reappear in the Tauchnitz edition of the
Poems
),
and a body of
Sonnets for
Pictures
, etc., which referred to works
by the poet himself, Ingres, Giorgione, Da
Vinci, Mantegna, and of Sir (then Mr.) E. B.
Jones.
I have often supposed that Rossetti
might have found an authority, or example,
for placing in and afterwards withdrawing his
poems from the grave of his wife, in the
record that when Francis I visited Avignon,
that monarch caused the tomb of Laura de Sade
to be opened, and took from it a small box
containing verses which had been written by
Petrarch's own hand, and were placed there by
him; they were afterwards, by order of the
King, returned.
Note: The fifth sentence of the footnote on page 58 ["A
capital illustration ..."] contains a typographic error: "letter" is
misspelled "latter."
WHEN he recovered from the shock of
his wife's death, which was not till some
months had passed, and he was settled in the
large house at Cheyne Walk, a new and
energetic sphere of life opened before our
painter, of which almost the first output was
Mr. Leathart's triptych in water colours of
Paolo and
Francesca
(R.A. 1883, No.
291), a developed version of a design which
Mr. Ruskin had some years before bought, and
which is very well represented here by a
transcript from one of Mr. Rae's treasures
(Burlington Club, 1883, No. 13).
This is altogether a sadder and more
sombre work than Mr. Leathart's. The first
compartment represents with extraordinary
power the kissing in the garden house; the
second the floating of the condemned pair in
the dark regions, where in the irresistible
air they roll as leaves roll in a strong
current, still clasping each other, and with
folded feet and garments all composed; moving
both as one they pass amid the rain of
sapphire-hearted flames. The third
compartment, the motto of which is “
O
lasso!
” the poet's cry of pity, refers
to the second division, and exhibits Virgil and
his guest walking in the gloom, Dante
regarding the lovers with pitying eyes, and
holding his loose garment to his lips. In the
first division, Paolo has looked up from the
pictured page of the book the princess and he
read together, and, all on fire at heart,
seen answering fire in Francesca's eyes; so
he clasps both her hands in both of his, and
they indulge with equal passion in the luxury
of love. Abandoning her lips to his, she,
under levelled eyelids, gazes on his face
while it meets hers.
The Bride
, or
The Beloved
, a noble picture which I regard
as Rossetti's masterpiece—one only example,
to wit
Proserpina
, to which we shall
shortly come, being in my opinion fit to be
compared with it—dates its origin from
1863,
1 and as regards its splendour and
colour and the passion
Transcribed Footnote (page [58]):
1 A letter from the painter to Mr. Rae, dated
“December 22nd, 1863,” mentions that
his correspondent had previously seen the
Beloved
in a not quite finished
condition. In the February following Rossetti
wrote again, and his note is an amusing
illustration of that business capacity in
which, as a bargain-maker, cash-receiver, and
negotiator in general, he, to the wonder of
his artistic and poetry-loving friends, shone
greatly. Of his powers in these respects,
bankers, lawyers, merchants, and everybody
whose wisdom in cash and commerce was
unchallengeable, spoke with unreserved
admiration, not to say surprise. Mr. Leyland,
who had ample experience as a buyer of
Rossetti's works, humorously, kindly, and in
the terms of Lowell's poem, joked about him
as “a darned hard hand at a deal.”
A capital illustration of his ability in the
managing of his affairs and negotiating the sale
of his pictures is before me, in a latter to
Mr. Rae, dated February 24th, 1864, proposing to
sell five drawings, including
The Blue
Closet
and
Paolo and Francesca
,
which are before the reader, to the great
Liverpool banker. Of these, he wrote, “the
purchaser would have to arrange with me for
the completion of the unfinished drawings,”
which were then in Mr. W. Morris's
collection. “No opportunity,” he urged,
“is ever likely to occur again of obtaining
drawings of mine at such a price, since they
are all good specimens of my work.” Than
these statements nothing could be truer.
Note: The caption for the illustration on page 59 is
reproduced exactly as it appears.
Paolo and Francesca da Rimini.
Figure: The picture is composed of three panels. “The left-hand compartment shows the lovers in the
act of kissing, with a large illuminated book open on
their knees. In the central panel, Dante and Virgil
stand crowned with laurel and bay-leaf; they clasp
each other by the hand and look pityingly towards
the right-hand compartment where the lovers,
locked in each others arms, float through the
sulphurous flames of Hell, forever united.”
Surtees p. 36-38
of its design, need not fear comparisons with
the greatest works of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries in Venice. In these
respects this
chef
d'œuvre
is a
superb and ardent illustration of the Song of
Solomon, “My Beloved is mine, and I am
his; let him kiss me with the kisses of his
mouth for thy love is better than
wine.”
The picture comprises—as if they had
halted in a marriage procession, towards the
spot where the enraptured bridegroom awaits
them—five life-size adult maidens and a
negro girl, who, in the front of the group,
and bearing a mass of roses in a golden vase,
is adorned with barbaric jewellery, all of
which harmonizes with her dusky skin, which,
although it has the true Titianesque ruddy
undertint, is of a deep bronze-brown surface
hue. The negress and her burthen are intended
to contrast intensely with the costume and
face of the bride herself, who is clad in an
apple-green robe, as lustrous as silk and as
splendid as gold and embroideries of flowers
and leaves in natural colours can make it.
This garment and its decorations support the
colour of the dark maid's skin and heighten
the value of the pure red and white of the
bride's carnations, while the contours of the
African's face and form contrast with the
Caucasian charm of the bride, her stately
countenance, and “amorous-lidded
eyes.”
The
Song is aptly illustrated
by the attire of the bride and her
companions; it says, “She shall be brought
unto the king in raiment of needlework; the
virgins that be her fellows shall bear her
company, and shall be brought unto thee.”
On either side of the bride appear two damsels,
not yet brides. The principal figures are
differently clad, diverse in face and form,
and to some extent contrasted in character
and expression. Besides her robe the bride
wears about her head and throat a veil of
tissue differing in its green from that of
the robe, and above her forehead rises an
aigrette of scarlet enamel and gold, that
resembles in some respects the peculiar
headdress of ancient Egyptian royalty; this
is set like a coronet upon her hair. While
advancing towards the bridegroom, with an
action at once graceful and natural, she,
half thoughtfully, half in pride of supreme
loveliness, has moved the tissue from her
face and throat. With the same movement she
has thrown backwards a large ringlet of her
hair, revealing the softened dignity of her
loveladen eyes, as well as her face, which is
exquisitely fair and fine, and has the least
hint of blushes within the skin, as though
the heart of the lady quickened, while we see
there is tenderness in her look, but
voluptuous ardour nowhere.
All the four maids seem to have been
chanting a nuptial strain, while they have
moved rhythmically with the steps of the
bride.
Excepting one or two later works of
the master, where sentiment of a more exalted
sort, as in
Proserpina
, inspired the
designs,
The
Beloved
appears to me to
be the finest production of his genius. Of
his skill, in the high artistic sense,
implying the vanquishment of prodigious
difficulties—difficulties the greater
because of his imperfect technical
education—there cannot be two opinions as
to the pre-eminence of Mr. Rae's magnificent
possession. It indicates the consummation of
Rossetti's powers in the highest order of
modern art, and is in perfect harmony with
that poetic inspiration which is found in
every one of his more ambitious pictures.
This example can only be called Venetian,
because of the splendid colouring which
obtains in it. Tintoret produced works which
assort most fortunately with this one, and
his finely dramatic mode of designing
reappears, so to say, in
The Beloved
,
where the intensity of Venetian art is
exalted, if that term be allowed, in a modern
strain, while its form, coloration, and
chiaroscuro are most subtly devised to
produce a whole which is thoroughly
harmonized and entirely self-sustained. Of
how few modern instances could this be said?
The colouring of this picture supports the
sentiment of the design in the
happiest manner, and in its magnificence the
work agrees with the chastity of the
conception. There is a nuptial inspiration
throughout it, even in the deep red of the
blush roses the negress bears. The technique
is so fine that it leaves nothing to be
desired, even in the lustrousness of the gold
vase, in the varied brilliancy of the robe of
the bride, in the subtle delicacy of the
carnations, solidly and elaborately modelled
as they are and varied to suit the nature of
each of the figures. Rossetti's
Beloved
is in English art what
Spenser's gorgeous and passionate
Epithalamium is in English verse, and,
if not more rapturous, it is more compact of
sumptuous elements.
We must hasten past several capital
examples, besides minor pictures and studies
which occupied the easels of Rossetti at this
epoch, and devote attention to
Beata Beatrix
, that poetic version
of his lost wife, which is her best if not her only
monument, and one of the finest examples in
the National Gallery. Dream-like, and of a
dream, he painted this wonderful picture,
which, if the
Bride
is an
epithalamium, must surely be called a nuptial
dirge. In some respects it is, as I have said
in
The
Portfolio
of 1891, even more
distinctly than that superb achievement,
The Beloved
, a full and true
reflection of the artist's idiosyncrasy of
the higher order. The mysticism and mystery
of
Beata Beatrix
are due to that which
was, so to say, the innermost Rossetti, or
Rossetti of Rossetti. The Beatrix of Dante's
imagination, sits in a balcony of her
father's palace in Florence. The picture
places us in the chamber from which the
balcony opens, and the damsel's form is half
lost against the outer light, half merged in
the inner shadows of the place. She is
herself a vision while—her corporeal eyes
losing power of outward speculation—the
heavenly visions of the New Life are revealed
to the eyes of her spirit. The open window
gives a view of the Arno, its bridge, and the
towers and palaces of that city in which
Dante and Beatrix spent their lives till the
fatal month of June, 1290, when she died,
and, as the poet tells us, “the whole city
came to be, as it were, widowed and despoiled
of all dignity,” or as the frame in the
National Gallery has it, being Dante's own
verse, uttered when her death was announced
to him, and borrowed from Jeremiah,
“Quomodo sedet sola
civitas”
In the picture the form of Beatrix is opposed to the
dun evening light of the outer world, and so
placed that the light
shines through the outer threads of her dark
auburn hair, and thus produces the effect of
a saint-like halo, while the face itself, is
to our
Study of a Head.
Figure: Head of Alexa Wilding, in profile to the right. Her hair is loose, and her shoulders are roughly sketched.
Surtees p. 128
sight, merged in the dimness caused by our
looking at the splendour of the river.
Accordingly, the figure appears partly
outlined against the
lustre, partly lost in the half-gloom of the
chamber. It is thus visible in what may be
called a twilight of brilliance and a
twilight of shadow, and the abstruseness of
the design is manifest. Her form is merged,
not lost, in that shadowy space which, in
Butler's happy phrase, is “of brightness
made.” Thus Rossetti happily showed that
his subject was a mystery, not without life of
this world, nor all unreal.
As to the picture itself and its
spectators, it is obvious that we remain on
the mundane side of things, while Beatrix in
a swoon passes into the Valley of the Shadow
of Death, and the Florence that Rossetti
painted is the Heavenly City of the Future.
Her features look pale in the half gloom, and
her hands, which erst clasped each other in
her lap, have fallen apart to lie supine
because their task is almost done, and this
is celestial light that glances on them. A
dove, of deep rose-coloured plumage, and,
like the bird of the Annunciation, crowned
with an aureole, poises on downward wings at
her knees, and bears to Beatrix's hand a
white poppy—
i.e., the mystical flower
in which Rossetti meant to combine the
emblems of death and chastity. Her face is in
most respects a likeness of the painter's
wife, but it is obvious that, although it was
not intended for a portrait of the lady, it
may well be called a spiritual translation,
inspiring features which had but a general
resemblance to those of Beatrix which he
depicted with so much pathos. In the
background the poet Dante attentively regards
the figure of Love, the ideal Eros of his
vision, who, holding a flaming heart, passes
on the other side of the picture heavenwards,
and seems to sign to him that he should
follow in that path. This vermilion-clad
genius is, of course, the
Eidolon,
Spiritual Beatrix, or celestial Love, whose
earthly image was the Beatrix the poet made
immortal in immortal verse.
1
We have now to pass to Mr. Rae's
Sibylla Palmifera
, the noble seated
figure of a virgin, quiet and pale, as if
long absorbed in the contemplation of the
mysteries of life and thought, and holding a
palm before a shrine,
Transcribed Footnote (page 64):
1 This picture was begun in 1863, finished in
1865, bought in 1866 by the Hon. W. Cowper
Temple, created Lord Mount Temple. After his
death his widow, who exhibited it at the
Academy in 1883, partly to carry out his
wish, partly in honour of the artist, gave it
to the National Gallery. There are two, not
so fine, versions of it in oil, besides a
repetition, if not two, in water colours, a
drawing in crayons, and various studies for
parts of this work. The
Portfolio,
1891, contained an etching from this picture.
while at her side burns a lamp whose
steadfast flame rises towards a garland of
roses which hangs near the sculptured head of
a cherub; on the other side is a thurible
from which smoke ascends slowly in circles,
towards a Death's-head, over which is
suspended a wreath of poppies. Above the
sibyl's head hangs a festoon of olive boughs
and, carved in a niche, is a sphinx, with
other emblems of mysteries. Two butterflies,
one of gold, the other of a carnation tint,
whose significance may be easily imagined,
hover near the sibyl's shoulder. The
coloration of this fine work, of which
Rossetti thought very highly, is as apt and
powerful as that of
The
Beloved
, but,
of course, of a very different kind; it
expresses pathos of quite another sort, and,
so to say, is such as Milton would desire for
- “Him that yon soars on golden wing,
- Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne,
- The Cherub Contemplation.”
As was his wont in several cases, our
painter wrote a fine sonnet illustrating this
picture and its theme, and published it in
Poems
, 1871. As these lines are
reprinted as
Soul's
Beauty
in
Ballads and
Sonnets
, the reader will be
pleased to find it here. Like the picture, the sonnet
has its antithesis in
Body's Beauty
, or
Lilith
, which is described below.
SIBYLLA PALMIFERA.
- “Under the arch of life, where love and death,
- Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
- Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
- I drew it in as simply as my breath.
- Hers are the eyes which over and beneath,
- The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,
- By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
- The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.”
- “This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
-
10Thy voice and hand shake still,—long known to thee
- By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat
- Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
- How passionately and irretrievably,
- In what fond flight, how many ways and days!”
Note: An omitted
reference to the footnote at the bottom of the page has been added as
a superscript "1" after "few approach Lilith,".
On
Venus Verticordia
, for
leave to reproduce the water-colour version
of which we are indebted to Mr Rae, Rossetti
wrote a passionate sonnet which, as it
contrasts intensely with the above example,
and because it describes the picture in
splendid words, may be welcome here from the
edition of 1870, which is repeated from the
text on the frame of Mr. Rae's picture:
VENUS
- “She hath the apple in her hand for thee,
- Yet almost in her heart would hold it back;
- She muses, with her eyes upon the track
- Of that which in thy spirit they can see.
- Haply, ‘Behold, he is at peace,’ saith she;
- ‘Alas! the apple for his lips,—the dart
- That follows its brief sweetness to his heart,—
- The wandering of his feet perpetually!’
- “A little space her glance is still and coy;
-
10But if she gives the fruit that works her spell,
- Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy.
- Then shall her bird's-strained throat the woe foretell,
- And her far seas moan as a single shell,
- And her grove glow with love-lit fires of Troy.”
She stands before a maze of
honeysuckle flowers and foliage, to obtain
which Rossetti wrote to Mr. Rae that he “lost
a whole week, and pounds on pounds,” and it
is backed by a dense mass of roses of rich
varieties and depths of tone; it is as
if—all fresh and blushing in the
daylight—she, nearly naked, stood in a
wilderness of flowers; her face is that of
a woman, young, tender and ardent, but not
without the wistfulness of pity which is
indicated by the verses.
We are now studying the very highest
examples of Rossetti's genius during its
second, or third, and most sumptuous
manifestation. Of the productions of the
period embracing 1864 to 1872, few surpass
and few approach
Lilith
1, of which a
transcript from a photo-
Transcribed Footnote (page 66):
1 There are two versions of this subject,
more or less resembling the example before us, and
painted in oil; that which (dated 1868) Mr.
W. Graham lent, as No. 305, to the Academy in
1883, was originally the largest and finest
of all. It was much injured by repaints, and
sold in 1885 for £588.
graph, taken before certain alterations which
few consider improvements, is now before the
reader. Rossetti got a hint of the subject
from that
Lilith.
Figure: “As Rossetti painted
Lilith she appears in the
ardent languor of triumphant luxury and beauty, seated as if
she lived now, and reclining back in a modern robe, if that
term be taken rightly; the abundance of her pale gold hair falls
about her Venus-like throat, bust and shoulders, and with voluptuous
self-applause—an element of the design rendered with ineffable
imagination and skill— she contemplates her features in the
mirror her left hand holds, while with the other hand, using
a comb, draws apart the long filaments of her hair.“
F. G. Stephens, The Portfolio, pp. 68-69Surtees p. 116-117
delightful repertory of whim, wit and
learning, the
Anatomy of
Melancholy
,
by R. Burton, who wrote “The Thalmudists say
that Adam had a wife called Lillis, before he
married Eve, and of her he begat nothing
but devils.” On this hint, and, perhaps from
a few lines in
Shelley's
translation
of
Faust, the painter-poet set about to
educe in solid form his notions of the fair
and evil-hearted witch, who, as a sort of
Lamia, had been originally formed like a
serpent. He took her as a type of the “Body's
Beauty,” and endeavoured, by the forces of
contrast and antithesis, to make more
distinct the nobler, because chaster, charms
of
Sibylla
Palmifera
.
As with regard
to the latter, so with
Lilith
he
illustrated his meaning in the following
sonnet.
BODY'S BEAUTY.
- “Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
- (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve),
- That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
- And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
- And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
- And, subtly by herself contemplative,
- Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave,
- Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
- “The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
-
10Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
- And soft-shed kisses and soft-shed sleep shall snare?
- Lo ! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
- Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
- And round his heart one strangling golden
hair.”
1
As Rossetti painted
Lilith
she
appears in the ardent languor of triumphant
luxury and beauty, seated as if she lived
now, and reclining back in a modern robe, if
that term be taken rightly; the abundance of
her pale golden hair falls about her
Venus-like throat, bust and
Transcribed Footnote (page 68):
1 The sonnet written on the frame of that
version of this picture which belonged to the
late Mr. F. Leyland (Burlington Club, 1883,
No. 47), is not quite the same as this. The
original version belongs to Mr. Bancroft,
Junior, of Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A. The
charming actress, whose stage name was Miss
Herbert, and who sat more than once to
Rossetti, was, I believe, the model for this
face and form. The reader will find some
curious matter about Lilith and similar fair
witches in
Notes and
Queries
, Sixth
Series, vols. viii. and ix., under
“Curiosities of Superstition in Italy,”
and written by Mr. R. H. Busk. A reduced version
of the work before us is in water-colours,
with the face altered, and is, or was, in the
collection of Mr. Alexander Stevenson, of
Tynemouth (B. Club, 1883, No. 55).
shoulders, and with voluptuous
self-applause—an element of the design
rendered with ineffable imagination and
skill—she contemplates her features in the
mirror her left hand holds, while with the
other hand, using a comb, she draws apart the
long filaments of her hair. The haughty
luxuriousness of the beautiful witch's face,
the tale of a cold soul amid all its charms,
does not belie, such was the art of the
master in painting it, the fires of a
voluptuous physique. She has passion without
love, and languor without satiety—energy
without heart, and beauty without tenderness
or sympathy for others—for her lovers least
of all. She holds the mirror with negligent
grace, and, self-absorbed, trains her
bewitching locks, letting them fall as her
slow fingers move in their long masses. Thus
occupied, she is reckless how much or how
little of her bosom and shoulders is
displayed in a delicious harmony of colour
with the warm white of her dress, heedless of
the grace of her attitude, and the superb
abundance of her form. A larger mirror stands
behind the lolling figure, and reflects a
garden; beyond the lady a mass of roses
bloom. These blossoms of strong and varied
hues, the warmer ivory of her carnations,
with inner rosy tints paler than the flowers,
and the diverse whites of Lilith's garments,
including an ample mantle lined with fur, are
charming elements of a fine coloration. The
expression of the witch's face is, in the
water-colour version, at once more amorous
and more cruel than that of the picture in
oil, and I am at one with Mr. W. Rossetti in
preferring the former face, which retains the
painter's original intention, to the latter,
which is due to revision at a latter period,
although the oil version itself is still
dated 1864; the reduced instance in water
colours being dated 1867. Such are the delays
incident to painting great pictures.
1
Passing Mr. Craven's
Washing
Hands
, a lady by that action significantly
dismissing a lover (B. Club, 1883, No. 54); Mr.
Rae's vigorous
Transcribed Footnote (page 69):
1 Here is part of a letter from the artist to
Mr. Rae, setting forth causes of repeated
delays in finishing the picture now in
question:—“Feb. 1, 1866 . . . I hope
to have made some progress with
Palmifera
by
the time the
Beloved
reaches you, but
cannot expect very much. So don't be surprised,
if you come soon, to see no great advance. It
may be otherwise, however—there is no
knowing in such a lottery as painting where
all things have a chance against one—weather,
stomach, temper, model, paint, patience, self-esteem,
self-abhorrence, and the Devil into the bargain.”
tragedy called
A Fight for
a Woman
,
two knights in a duel;
The
Blue Bower
(not the same as Mr. Rae's
Blue
Closet
, but a half-length figure of the
sitter for
Bocca Baciata
and
Lilith
), which belongs to Mr. Craven;
the charmingly fresh and pure
Il
Ramoscello
, the bust of a young girl, of
which, prefixed to Mr. Colvin's accomplished
essay on Rossetti, there is a good woodcut in
the
Magazine of
Art
, 1883;
Regina Cordium
, a head in oil of the beautiful
Miss Wilding; we come to Mr. Rae's superb
Monna
Vanna
,
or
The Lady with the
Fan
, which has something that is
evanescent and fickle in her expression, a
self-centred character revealed by every
feature, lovely as these are. The ends of a
long coral necklace are about her wrists, and
she is drawing the carcanet slowly round her
neck; a heart-shaped jewel of clear white
crystal is suspended on her breast, a hard,
cold, colourless gem that is significant of
her soul and its impulses: she holds a fan of
brown feathers, like those of a pheasant's
wing, and wears a robe of white tissue, the
folds of which are at once beautiful and
unstable, embroidered with gold in lines that
scintillate here and there. Her lips that
have been often kissed are cherry-coloured,
ripe and full, yet not warmed by inner
passion, nor exalted by rapture of
contemplation, as those of
Sibylla
Palmifera
, still less are they chaste and
untasted like those of the maiden of
Il
Ramoscello
. Painted in 1866, and
repainted in 1873, this picture was No. 302
in the Academy, 1883. It is sometimes
called
Belcolore, but is quite
different from a work of 1863 which is so
named, and shows a girl biting a rosebud. A
choice work in oil called
A Christmas
Carol
, a young girl singing with gladness
to a lute, dates from 1867, and belongs to
Mr. Rae. It has been well etched by M.
Gaujean. In this year we reckon
Tristram
and Iseult drinking the Love-Potion
, the
latest of Rossetti's illustrations of the
Arthurian legends, as a very telling
representation of a fine and pregnant
subject. It belongs, or lately did so, to Mr.
Leathart, and in some respects may be ranked
with
The Loving
Cup
, an inferior
version of which was recently in the Leyland
Collection; Mr. Graham's of a later date is
better.
No production of 1868 by Rossetti
charms the student more than the noble
Aurea
Catena
(now the property of Lord
Battersea), sometimes called
The Lady with
the Chain
, a sort of portrait of Mrs. W.
Morris, which from a drawing in crayons forms
the subject of our next illustra-
The Lady with the Gold Chain.
Figure:
Jane Morris, seated, leaning over a short wall, from waist up. She is turned
three-quarters to the left and is fingering a long chain
stretched from around
her neck.
tion, and is the first of a very numerous
category of pictures, cartoons, and studies
from that lady.
The design of this beautiful work
explains itself, and needs no more to be said
than correcting the error which has named it
as
La
Pia
,
a title due to an oil
picture of 1868, illustrating the fifth canto
of the
Purgatorio
of Dante, which
belonged to Mr. Leyland and, if space
permitted, should have ample attention in
this text.
1
Transcribed Footnote (page 72):
1 There is only a general resemblance between
the designs of
Aurea Catena
and
La
Pia
. The unhappy lady who bore the latter
name, Pia de' Tollomei, was wife of Nello
della Pietra of Siena, who, until she died
there, was confined by her husband in a
fortress of the fever-haunted Maremma. In
Rossetti's picture she is dressed in blue and
white drapery, seated behind the rampart of
her prison, with heart-breaking languor and
despair looking over the plain and moodily
trifling with her fatal wedding ring.
La Pia
was No. 319 at the Academy, 1883, and
at Mr. Leyland's sale, May, 1892, sold to Mr.
Bibby for 300 guineas, a comparatively small
price for a Rossetti in good condition, and
measuring 42 x 48 inches. It was not finished
till 1881, and is therefore one of the
master's latest productions. Together with
the
Day Dream
,
La
Pia
is
described at length in the
Athenæum
,
1881, No. 2783. Dante met the unquiet spirit
of Pia de' Tollomei in Purgatory, among those
whose opportunity of repentance was only at
the last moment, and who died without
absolution. From the
Purgatorio the
artist thus translated her appeal to the
Italian poet—
-
130“‘Ah! when on earth thy voice again is heard,
- And thou from the long road hast rested thee,’
- (After the second spirit said the third),
- ‘Remember me who am La Pia; me
- Siena, me Maremma, made, unmade,
- This in his inmost heart well knoweth he
- With whose fair jewel I was ringed and wed.’”
Such a theme as these lines indicate is
very different from that of the picture
before us, although the works make it obvious
that the same lady sat for both. Before me
lies an autograph version of the translation
as above, which in the fifth line differs
from that engraved upon the frame of the
painting, being—
- “From Siena sprung, and by Maremma dead.”
The alteration shows Rossetti's extreme care
in translating and adapting texts to his
pictures, and was effected between my visit
to him, when the work was available, and the
engraving of the lines on the frame. As
previous pages have shown it was Rossetti's
frequent custom to write illustrative verses
on the frames of his pictures such as this,
The Day
Dream
,
Monna Vanna
,
Proserpine
, and the like. The practice
was a survival of what he had done when
writing the sonnets published in the
Germ
, and it was continued to his last
days. Not all these verses are included in
the published volume of the artist's poems.
Aurea
Catena
was Lot 38 in the
Rossetti sale catalogue at Christie's, May
12, 1883.
Note: A comma has been omitted between
"(otherwise Dis Manibus)" and "La Ghirlandata" in the text.
In its preparation, if not in its
completion, following
Aurea
Catena
, we
find our subject dealing with
Rosa
triplex
, a water-colour drawing for Mr.
W. Graham, and representing three beautiful
female heads, delineated alike in different
views of Miss Alice Wilding, one of the
loveliest models who sat to Rossetti not only
for this noteworthy group, but for the heads
of the ladies in
Sibylla Palmifera
,
Veronica Veronese
,
The Roman
Widow
(otherwise
Dis Manibus)
La
Ghirlandata
,
The Sea Spell
,
and various drawings and studies of choice
qualities. She began to sit to him, I think,
about 1864, and continued to do so till about
ten years later, and, in regard to her form
and air, he never adopted a more exquisite
type of womanhood,
per se. As a type
she succeeded Miss Ruth Herbert, as that lady
named herself in public, and in the later
portion of her decade, was to some extent
superseded by Mrs. Morris, who sat to the
painter so often and to such marked effect
that idle critics, ignorant of the facts,
were accustomed to censure Rossetti for
always, as they said, depicting the same type
of womanhood. As to this, the truth has been
set forth by the artist's brother, who
enumerated not fewer than fourteen different
models whom our common subject had excelled
with, to say nothing of those who sat for
inconsiderable heads or were not literally
represented in pictures and studies of all
sorts. There are not fewer than five versions
of
Rosa
triplex
,
of the first and best
of which, dated 1867, the
Portfolio in
1892 gave a fine reproduction from the red
chalk drawing in the National Gallery, a
bequest of Mr. J. J. Lowndes, who died in
1891. Here is part of what the
Portfolio
published concerning the versions of
Rosa triplex
, the history of which illustrates
so many of the characteristics of Rossetti
and his art, that I should be sorry to omit
it from these pages.
“In all these cases the artist
worked, so to say, simply as a devotee of
Beauty in one manifestation of that divine
element, but with no distinct intention to
develop the spiritual essence of his ideal by
imparting to the luxurious and refined
physical aspect of the person in question
those mystical impressions which pervade
Sibylla
Palmifera
, the romantic
inspiration of
Veronica Veronese
, the
spirituality which, to the heart of it, is
Italian of the sixteenth century, or
La
Ghirlandata's
dreamy amorousness, the
spell of which she is weaving with the notes
of the harp whose strings her fingers slowly
and daintily caress. The
rapture of her deep blue eyes attests the
secret of the throbbing music which loses
itself amid the foliage of her bower; so
intense is the inspiration of the picture.
Nor in depicting
Rosa triplex
, was
Rossetti seeking to express
- “‘In Venus' eyes the gaze of
Proserpine,’
which was the poetic motive of his
Pandora
, instinct with mysterious
trouble.”
So many differently inspired versions
did Rossetti give us of the beauty of Alice
Wilding. Nevertheless, I dare say, not a
little of her charm existed mostly in the
passionate heart of the painter; yet I well
remember that nothing he drew of her, diverse
as the delineations were, seemed less than an
exact likeness. Of course, one saw her
through the mood of the artist and it has
sometimes appeared to me that the ardent poem
he called
The
Portrait
referred,
however generally, yet chiefly, to her, when
he described how, when “my lady's picture”
was finished he exclaimed—
- “Lo ! it is done. Above the long, lithe throat
-
10The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss,
- The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
- Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note
- That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
- They that would look on her must come to
me.”
Did ever lover, poet and painter write of his
mistress more finely than thus? In
Sibylla
Palmifera
the model of
Rosa triplex
is presented in an impressive light, and the
artist himself appears therein
characteristically as the devotee of that
intellectual beauty which Shelley named
- “The awful shadow of some unseen power.”
Rossetti's sonnet on the sibyl I have already
quoted.
La Bionda del Balcone
(the blonde Lady of the Balcony) followed
Rosa triplex
in the same year, 1868, and was
succeeded by
The Princess Sabra drawing
the fatal Lot
, both in water colours, and
La
Pia
was finished for Mr. Leyland.
Then, in 1869, came
La Donna della Finestra
(The Lady at the Window)
otherwise
The Lady of
Pity
, and
supposed to be that dame who, according to
the
Vita
Nuova
,
looked with profound compassion upon Dante when he passed
by her house weeping because of the death of
Beatrice. He feared the people would notice
his sorrow, and looking up, saw a young and
beautiful lady pitifully regarding him from
her window. The first version of this subject
Rossetti made in crayons and sold to Mr. W.
Graham, it was afterwards reproduced in
photography and published; next, in 1879,
came, if I understand the painter's brother
rightly, a version in oil which Mr. F. S.
Ellis bought, and thirdly, in 1881, a
somewhat different version of the same
design, which the artist left unfinished, and
comprising the head and hands only. A study
in chalks of
The Lady of
Pity
was Lot
23, at Rossetti's sale. Lot 101 in the same
sale was a picture in oil, including the head
and hands only, and this, doubtless, is the
original of the cut before us. This, although
the sale catalogue gives its date as
c.
1878 (the date of Lot 23, being
c.
1875), I, following a rule adopted in this text,
place here, according to Mr. W. Rossetti's
date of the primary type of the whole
category,
i.e., Mr. Graham's version
of
La Donna della Finestra
. Mr. F. S.
Ellis's version was No. 321 in the Academy,
1883, and dated 1879.
1
The earliest rendering of
Pandora
, which is in crayons, dates
from 1869 and belonged to Mr. T. Eustace
Smith, who lent it to the Burlington Club in
1883. Mr. John Graham had a version in oil
(R.A. 1883, No. 320), dated 1871. It
represents a half-length figure, with long,
dark auburn hair, in red drapery, and holding
a casket inscribed “Nesitur
ignescitur,” and from which a red flame
issues. Rossetti wrote a sonnet for this
picture, which, as it illustrates its
poetical and pathetic motives, and is not
reprinted in
Ballads and
Sonnets
may
be quoted here:—
PANDORA.
- “What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine
- The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
- Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
- In its own likeness make thee half divine?
Transcribed Footnote (page 75):
1 If the reader is of a generous, not to say
a merciful, disposition, he will in these and
other instances forgive possible errors in
dating examples mentioned in this text. The
confusion of the titles, dates and
descriptions of Rossetti's works remains
great, although the painter's brother has
done much to lay straight the threads of a
tangled skein of records.
Our Lady of Pity.
Figure: “The subject from the
Vita Nuova is a woman
looking down from her window with compassion upon
the grief-stricken Dante weeping for the death of
Beatrice . . . . ” In this version, “Only the head and hands are
finished; the body is indicated in outline on an Indian red
ground.”
Surtees p. 151-152
- Was it that Juno's brow might stand a sign
- For ever? and the mien of Pallas be
- A deadly thing? and that all men might see
- In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?
- “What of the end? These beat their wings at will
-
10The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill—
- Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
- Aye, hug the casket now! Whither they go
- Thou mayst not dare to think, nor canst thou know
- If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.”
Neither the picture nor the sonnet is a
first-rate work of Rossetti's, though they
both illustrate his power of projecting
himself into a subject which, in itself,
seemed to have been made on purpose for
him.
The next important picture by our
poet-painter is that which many consider to
be his
chef-d'œuvre, to wit,
the famous
Dante's
Dream
, now in the
Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, where it was
placed by public subscription. Mr. W.
Rossetti has told at length the history of
this very fine and impressive work, which,
begun in 1869, continued to be a sort of
heroic white elephant, remaining chiefly in
the painter's studio till 1881. I do not
intend to enter into this subject now—the
picture having been again and again before
the public—or to describe at length the
grand and monumental design itself. Suffice
it that, when at the Academy in 1883, it was
thus, in the painter's own memoranda,
explained: “The scene is a chamber of dreams,
strewn with poppies, where Beatrice is seen
lying on a couch, as if just fallen back in
death; the winged figure of Love, in red
drapery (the pilgrim Love of the
Vita Nuova, wearing the scallop shell on his
shoulder) leads by the hand Dante, who walks
conscious but absorbed, as in sleep; in his
other hand Love carries his arrow pointed at
the dreamer's heart, and with it a branch of
apple-blossom; as he reaches the bier, Love
bends for a moment over Beatrice with the
kiss which her lover has never given her;
while the two green-clad dream-ladies hold
the pall full of May-blossom suspended for an
instant before it covers her face for ever.”
There are many minor incidents which need not
detain us. Probably it was of the chalk
drawing reproduced on page 63 which Mr. Rae
bought of his friend in 1872 that Rossetti wrote
“it was done right off at once.”
It seems to be an elaborated study for the
head of one of the “dream-ladies” and
pall-bearers, who is on our right in this large
picture. Its beauty speaks for itself. It is
a more or less exact likeness of Miss
Spartali, now Mrs. W. J. Stillman, and a
distinguished lady-artist who sat otherwise
to our painter, especially for the
Fiammetta
of 1870.
So long ago as 1855 our artist had
been attracted by the subject of
Dante's
Dream
, when he made a water-colour
drawing to illustrate it, which Miss Heaton
lent to the Burlington Club, 1883. Mr V.
Lushington wrote in the
Oxford and
Cambridge Magazine
, August, 1866, an
enthusiastic essay upon the design, which, in
1857, was included in the Russell Place
Exhibition. A double predella was added to
the largest of Rossetti's works, and it was
the subject of countless discussions,
experiments, and alterations, as well as of a
world of studies and negotiations, including
more than one change of owner. At last, in
1881, it was sold to Liverpool for
£1,050, which was far below its
artistic value, and less than Rossetti had
received for much less ambitious examples of
his art.
From the magnificent drawing in
crayons Mr. Constantine A. Ionides lent, as
No. 80, at the Burlington Club's exhibition
of 1883, inscribed with the artist's
monogram, and dated 1870, the reproduction of
A Lady with a
Fan
, now before us, was
taken. Like the model who sat for this, as
well as for
Monna Vanna
and many other
fine things of the same category, its noblest
function is to “live and be beautiful.”
Accordingly, it explains itself, and has no
history that can be set forth here, except so
far as relates to Rossetti's honour as, when
he was pleased to do justice to himself, a
perfect draughtsman. This exquisite example
attests that no one could draw a head with
more skill, art, and taste than he; while,
except the hands, which are a little too
large, the whole work is faultless. The year
1870 did not witness the completion of any
important painting, a shortcoming for which
the glorious
Proserpine
, that had its
inception in a drawing of Mrs. Morris, dated
1871, made ample amends. Although the oil
picture of this theme, which Mr. W. A. Turner
lent to the Manchester Exhibition in 1882,
and as No. 86 to the Burlington Club in 1883,
is dated 1877, I consider it under the
earlier date. It represents at life-size, a
single figure of Proserpine in Hades, holding
in her hand the pomegranate, by partaking of
which she precluded her
Lady with a Fan.
Figure: “Fanny Cornforth, three-quarter-length, seated turned to the left, eyes
looking to front, holding a feather fan in her left hand; her right arm is
extended across her body, the hand resting on the chair-arm.”
Surtees p. 123
return to earth.
1 She is passing along a
gloomy corridor in her palace, and, on the
wall behind her, a sharply defined space of
light has fallen. It is the cool, bluish,
silvery light of the moon, that because of
some open door far overhead has penetrated
the subterranean dimness, flashing down for a
moment on the wall, revealing the ivy-tendrils
that languish in the shade, displaying the
queen, her features, the abundant masses of
her hair, which seem to have become darker
than was ever known on the earth above, and
the sorrowfulness of her face. It shows also
the slowly curling smoke of an incense-burner
(the attribute of a goddess) which, in the
still air of the gallery, circles upwards,
and spreading, vanishes. Proserpine is clad in
a steel-blue robe, that fits loosely her
somewhat slender, slightly wasted, but noble
frame of antique mould. It seems that she moves
slowly with moody eyes instinct with slowly burning
anger; yet she is outwardly still, if not
serene, and very sad in all her stateliness;
too grand for complaint. In these eyes is the
deep light of a great spirit, and, without
seeing or heeding, they look beyond the gloom
before her. Her fully-formed lips, purplish
now, but ruddy formerly, and once moulded by
passion, are compressed, the symbols of a
strenuous soul yearning for freedom, and,
with all their pride, suffering, rather than
enjoying goddess-ship. The even-tinted cheeks
are rather flat; the face, so wide is the
brow, is almost triangular, the nose like
that of a grand antique. These features are
set in masses of bronze-black and crimped
hair, darkly lustrous as it is, that
encompasses the head, and flows like an
abundant mantle over her shoulders and bust.
The wonder of the picture is in the face. The
light cast on the wall throws the head in
strong relief; she turns slowly towards the
distant gleam; the ivy branch curves
downwards, and assists, with the swaying
lines of the drapery, the composition of the
whole.
2
Transcribed Footnote (page 80):
1 In countless early Italian pictures the
bitten pomegranate is a well understood
emblem of sorrow and pain. Hence it often
occurs in the hand of the Infant Christ, who,
in several examples, presses the fruit to the
lips of His mother. On this account, no
doubt, Rossetti placed the pomegranate in the
hand of Proserpine.
Transcribed Footnote (page 80):
2 See the
Athenæum
, 1875, No.
2494. Rossetti wrote to Mr. Rae—“Oct
12th, 1877. The present one [
Proserpine
]
belonging to myself was begun before
Leyland's [of 1873], and thus had the immense
advantage of the first inspiration from
nature. It is unquestionably the finer of
the two, and is the very flower of my work. . . .
You may perhaps have seen an article in
the
Athenæum
relating to some
pictures of mine completed at that time, and
among which this is the first mentioned. The
size is the same as Leyland's, the price
1,000 guineas.” Mr. Leyland's version was
sold in May, 1892, for 540 guineas; it was
No. 314 at the Academy, 1883. Mr. Turner's
version is that which Mr. W. Rossetti
distinguishes as No. 3 of the rather numerous
category of
Proserpines; it now
belongs to Mr. C. Butler, and is that which
the painter himself thought highest of. It is
the original of the plate before us for which
we are indebted to Mr. Fairfax Murray.
Proserpine.
D. G. Rossetti, pinx.
Walter L. Colls. Ph. Sc.
Figure: Rossetti's sonnet in Italian,
Proserpina (For a Picture) is in scroll in upper right-hand corner of the
picture (work code: 1-1872). Proserpine as Empress of Hades holding a pomegranate in her left hand,
turned three-quarters to the left. An incense burner is in the lower left corner, with ivy on the wall
behind her.
Rossetti wrote a sonnet in Italian, and
an English version of the same, both of which
are inscribed on the frame of the picture in
question. The latter is as follows:
PROSERPINA.
- “Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
- Unto this wall,—one instant and no more
- Admitted at my distant palace door.
- Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
- Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
- Afar those skies from this Tartarean gray
- That chills me: and afar, how far away,
- The nights that shall be from the days that were.
- “Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
-
10Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:
- And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
- (Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring,
- Continually together murmuring,)—
- ‘Woe's me for thee, unhappy
Proserpine!’”
These are indeed profound sighs,
worthy of a goddess of the antique mould, and
even sadder than the picture to which they
refer. As to their subject, every friend of
the painter knew that he was prouder of
having invented it than of his share in
devising, or rather applying to art any other
theme in which he excelled. Reckoning
The
Bride
as his technical
chef-d'œuvre,
I place
Proserpine
next to it, not because
it is as well or better painted than half-a-dozen of
his capital pieces, severally, but on account of
the complete originality of its theme. On the
other hand it should be remembered that,
while he produced at least four or five
versions of
Proserpine
, he never
ventured on a second
Bride
.
The disastrous use of chloral, which
was ultimately to insure his ruin, while it
certainly did not act alone in promoting that
catastrophe, had not, in 1871, although he
became addicted to it more than two years
before, made deep inroads upon our poet's
energies, nor reduced his power in art. But
it is noteworthy that, sometime before 1868,
when chloral came to his hands, nearly all
the subjects of his pen and brush were more
or less desponding; of those none is sadder
than
Proserpine
. At this time the
chivalric and romantic subjects he had
affected so late as the
Tristram and
Iseult
of 1867, disappeared from his
repertory, and gave place to the woe of
Ceres' daughter, the mournful despair of
La
Pia
,
the sad pity of the
Donna della
Finestra
,
the ominous agony of
Pandora
, the sorrowing of Dante in the
Dream
, and the vague melancholy of
Veronica
Veronese
,
whose music is a
dirge. Rossetti was not the man to
“be sad o' nights out of mere wantonness,”
and therefore we must seek a cause for his
selecting themes so gloomy and so woebegone
as these, and may perhaps find it in the
insidious effects of the drug which precipitated,
though it did not cause his downfall,
and—long before he had reached the allotted
goal of man's existence—left desolate that
noble “House of Life,” whose inner
treasures his poetry and painting set forth with
- “Such a pencil, such a pen.”
Besides the works described above,
the years 1871, 1872, and 1873 were chiefly
devoted by Rossetti to the production of
minor portraits and new versions of already
completed masterpieces, such as the
repetitions of
Beata
Beatrix
,
Hesterna
Rosa
,
Rosa
triplex
,
and
Proserpine
. Two noteworthy
exceptions are
Veronica
Veronese
,
which he painted for Mr. Leyland, and
La
Ghirlandata
,
which Mr. W. Graham bought.
The former belongs to 1872, and, when it was
No. 295 at the Academy in 1883, was thus
described by the
Athenæum
in a
criticism which I cannot now improve.
“
Veronica
Veronese
is the life-size
figure in profile to our right, her head
turned in a dreamy mood towards us, while
with levelled eyelids and parted lips, she
listens to the notes produced by her fingers
on the strings of a violin hanging above the
table where she has been writing music. The
sharp notes are repeated, and inspired by the
shrill song of a canary in a cage suspended
behind the lady's seat, and to which she is
endeavouring to give pathetic expression in
the ordered music of her instrument.
Rossetti appears here again to be giving
expression in art to those associations of
sound, colour, and sense which are hardly
less obviously embodied in many pictures we
have pre-
viously mentioned. The type chosen for the
face is the most sculpturesque of all those
he affected, and this picture is the most
perfect illustration of it. Chromatically
speaking, the work is almost classic in its
style. The sumptuous, deep-toned greens of
her sleeves accord with the grayer greens of
the hangings behind the lady's figure; the
tawny gold of her hair encloses clear-cut
features of Miss Wilding's type, the
carnations of which, although not wan, are
but little tinged with the rose, and suggest
a life of studious retirement and majestic
leisure. The brightness of the music sheet
repeats the tonality of the flesh tints, the
jonquils on the table are adapted to the
colour of the bird. In the like manner the
tone and colour schemes of the whole example
were constructed in harmonies, and on what
may be called musical principles. The general
aspect of the picture is that of a Paolo
Veronese with the addition of searching
execution, or an elaborately-finished
Sebastiano which time had not lowered in
lighting, tone or tint. This instance of
La Veronica
justifies the motto from
‘G. Ridolfi,’
‘
C'était
le mariage des voix de la nature et de l'âme,
l'aube d'une création mystique.
’
It is one of the last of Rossetti's works of which
music suggests the theme.”
Such is the
masterpiece, in the firm and sculpturesque touch
of which, as well as in its logical treatment and
poetic inspiration, we recognize no sign of
decaying powers or weakened will; such is the
example the artist called “the
fiddle-picture,” which at Mr. Leyland's
sale fetched a thousand guineas.
Mr. Graham's
La
Ghirlandata
(R. A., 1883, No. 298) may fairly take its
place with
Dis
Manibus
,
The Bride
, and
Lilith
, without being
compared with any of them. It shows the
green-clad Lady of the Garlands sitting among
the golden foliage of a thorn tree and myrtle
copse; her hands are drawing music from a
harp beside her seat, and her face proved her
soul to be absorbed in the sound she
produces. On either side, over her shoulders,
an angel looks from between the glowing upper
leaves of the copse, as if Heaven itself
waited upon her song. Round the summit of
the harp is slung a garland of roses and honey-
suckles, the sweetest of earthly flowers,
and the sky above, where the day of
earth is dying, hints in its calm, ardent
depths of a sweetness still beyond. The
evening breeze has just risen and begins to
lift the light drapery above her shoulders.
In colour, this picture is chiefly a
study of green, interspersed with blue of
various shades—the deep blue aconite which
appears at the base of the composition, the
bright bird that flits through the trees, the
wing pattern painted on the instrument, and
the colour fading from the sky. These hues
are balanced by the golden bronze of the
lady's hair and the dusky-coloured harp, an
instrument which is solid, with strings on
each side.
1
It appears that it was late in 1873
the first idea was suggested to Rossetti of
illustrating with a picture his own poem
The Blessed
Damozel
, which had
originally appeared in the second number of
the
Germ
, February, 1850. With this
date therefore—although the first of several
versions, that bought by Mr. W. Graham, was
not available till the following year, while
Mr. Leyland's picture had not the final
touches till 1879—our illustrations of this
stupendous work, are placed here. The picture
more particularly illustrates a portion of
the poem which appeared in the Tauchnitz
edition of Rossetti's works, 1873, and is
less known to English readers than either of
the other versions. The legend, if such it
can be called, which is entirely of the
poet-painter's invention, tells us that the
“Damozel,” dying in the fulness of
youth, and before her lover, waited for his
coming in Heaven, while her earthly companions,
maids and men, were united in perfect bliss. Time
passed, and still the lover came not, but she
continuously waited:—
- “It was the rampart of God's house
- That she was standing on;
- By God built over the sheer depth
- The which is Space begun;
- So high, that looking downward thence
-
30She scarce could see the sun.
Transcribed Footnote (page 84):
1 See the
Athenæum
,
No. 2494, for
the above, and further notes on Rossetti's
pictures. Mr. W. Rossetti, the painter's
brother, wrote that the flowers prominent in
this work are, he thought, larkspurs, though
the painter meant to depict monkshood, which
is poisonous, and thus intended to suggest
this in “Beauty which must die.”
This intention was not apparent to me in
La Ghirlandata
. My friend adds that,
although the artist gave us so many pictures
in which the pathetic as well as the poetic
qualities of music are illustrated with the
rarest subtlety, as of music that “overtakes
far thought,” he knew nothing of that art as
such, and hardly cared to listen to its
graver exercises.
- “Beneath, the tides of day and night
- With flame and darkness ridge
- The void, as low as where this earth
- Spins like a fretful midge.
- “Around her, lovers, newly met
- 'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
- Spoke evermore among themselves
-
40Their rapturous new names;
- And the souls mounting up to God
- Went by her like thin flames.
- “And still she bowed herself and stooped
- Out of the circling charm;
- Until her bosom must have made
- The bar she leaned on warm,
- And the lilies lay as if asleep
- Along her bended arm.
- “From the fixèd place of Heaven she saw
-
50Time like a pulse shake fierce
- Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
- Within the gulf to pierce
- Its path; and now she spoke as when
- The stars sang in their spheres.
- “The sun was gone now; the curled moon
- Was like a little feather
- Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
- She spoke through the still weather.
- Her voice was like the voice the stars
-
60Had when they sang together.
- “‘I wish that he were come to me,
- For he will come,’ she said.
- ‘Have I not prayed in Heaven?—on earth,
-
70Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd?
- Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
- And shall I feel afraid?’”
Thus yearning, the Damozel prefigures to herself the meeting she craves.
- “‘We two,’ she said, ‘will seek the groves
- Where the lady Mary is,
- With her five handmaidens, whose names
- Are five sweet symphonies,
- Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
- Margaret and Rosalys.
- “Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
-
110And foreheads garlanded;
- Into the fine white cloth like flame
- Weaving the golden thread,
- To fashion the birth-robes for them
- Who are just born, being dead.’”
Note: The second sentence on page 86 ["Her loose and ample
robe ..."] contains a typographic error: "covers he shoulders" is printed
rather than "covers her shoulders."
The Blessed Damozel of this picture
is of life-size, or a little larger, and,
from amid a mass of blooming celestial roses,
leans forward on one arm against and over the
golden wall or parapet of Heaven, which is
enriched with strange sculptures, and gleams
in the mystical light of the place. Her loose
and ample robe, of a pale cerulean blue,
covers he shoulders, and, above
this is a scarf of bronze tint, intermixed
with silvery hues. The great heavenly lilies
of sainthood lie in the hollow of her other
arm. Her head is bent forward, and her pure
pale face is marked with a love-yearning look
in the never-weary, yet wistful eyes, and on
her half-open lips sits immovably patient
expectation; her hair is of a deep golden
tint, there are purple stars about it, and it
seems to flow from under these upon her
shoulders and her back in an abundant mass
richly lighted. The exaltation of the soul
which is expressed by the poem has been made
concrete in the features, verifying the charm
of the verses:
- “The wonder was not yet quite gone
- From that still look of hers;
- Albeit, to them she left, her day
- Had counted as ten years.”
The still dignity of her attitude is
a masterpiece of graceful design, and the
lines of the figure are amply supported by
the subsidiary elements yet to be described,
for the minor incidents of the work confirm
the suggestions of the poem.
Behind the Damozel are the large
mazes of the heavenly garden, where, under
the branches of an enormous tree, numerous
re-united lovers, clad in deep blue, are
joyfully embracing, and are seen in changing
lights and shadows. In front of the golden
parapet, and bearing green palms
with which to welcome the lover for whose coming
they, like the Damozel wait, are two ministering
spirits, both beautiful, but with different
expressions on their faces, the one more
pitiful and sad than the other, for the
Sancta Lilias, which was founded on The Blessed Damozel.
Figure: The central figure (from Alexa Wilding) on a gold ground with unfinshed drapery. She holds yellow irises in her right hand.
latter is younger, and his look is less
sorrowful. Their intensely blue wings,
instinct with latent fires, arch grandly over
their heads, as if ready to be expanded in
flight, and launch the palm-bearers forth on the
Note: The eighth word on this page, "lovers," contains a typographic
error. An apostrophe has been
left out; the word should be "lover's".
celestial road by which all anticipate the
lovers coming. Between these two ministers,
and immediately below the shining
parapet, appears a seraph, an infant's head
surrounded by multiform and manifold wings
like those of the tetramorph, and of a deep
and vivid green; the face of this presence
has a watchful and sad expression; it is the
countenance of a fate presaging sorrow and
loss even in its steadfast regard and fixed
lines.
1
The
Blessed
Damozel
is represented
here by a reproduction of Rossetti's original
design in chalk of a group of “lovers newly
met,” who appear in the background of Mr.
Graham's version of the picture, not in that
which Mr. Leyland had. A predella obtains
with both examples, although they differ in
various details. Several studies of this kind
were dispersed at the Rossetti sale, 1883.
The same picture is likewise represented by
the cut of
Sancta Lilias
, a work which
was the property of the late Lord
Mount-Temple, and executed in 1874 as the
date upon it states. It is a variation, in
part, of the bust, hands and head, of the
chief figure in the great picture, adapted to
suit a differing expression and manner, and
named according to the lilies in the maiden's
hand. The robe and the background are golden.
It was No. 87 at the Burlington Club
Exhibition, 1883, where No. 84 was a similar
study, belonging to Mr. W. Graham, in red
chalk, and holding a palm. A study in red
chalk of
Sancta Lilias
was Lot 35 at
the Rossetti sale, and dated in the catalogue
as of 1879.
Four works distinguished Rossetti's
out put in art during the year 1875. They
are, besides “versions” and portraits
as before,
Venus
Astarte
,
The
Sphinx
, or
The Question,
Dis Manibus
,
and
La
Bella Mano
. The first of these, sometimes called
Astarte Syriaca
, a mystically inspired version of
Mrs. W. Morris's lineaments, was illustrated
by an admirable plate in the
Portfolio
of 1892, the immediate original of which was
a chalk drawing, and an historical essay by
the present writer. The second example is
represented here by a reduction of a pencil
drawing, the only one which Rossetti made to
carry out an idea of what his biographer
calls (in this I cannot agree with him)
“one of my brother's most important
inventions; he wished,” says that loyal
critic, “to carry it out as a picture,
but found no feasible opportunity for doing
Transcribed Footnote (page 88):
1 See the
Athenæum
, 1877,
No. 2581.
so. On his death-bed he composed two sonnets,
as yet unpublished, to illustrate the same
idea. In this design the Sphinx represents
the mystery of existence, or the destiny of
man, unfathomable by himself. Three
personages—a youth, a man of mature age, and
an old man—are shown as coming to the secret
haunt of the Sphinx, to consult her as to the
Two Figures Embracing, from The Blessed Damozel.
Figure: “Study for two lovers embracing; standing, over
half-length. The man is on the left, his arms about the girl's
waist; the girl has her arms round the man's neck.”
Surtees p. 143
arcana of Fate. The man is putting his
question; the graybeard toils upward towards
the spot; the youth, exhausted by his
journey, sinks and dies, unable so much as to
give words to the object of his quest. With
upward and inscrutable eyes the Sphinx
remains impenetrably silent.”
1
Note: In the page note, it appears that double quotation
marks were mistakenly used to enclose the third sentence, instead of the
single quotation marks appropriate for a quotation within a quotation.
In addition, another typographical error
placed a double close-quote at the end of the page note, when it belongs
after "moonlight". That is, W. M. Rossetti is being quoted up to the word
"moonlight".
Transcribed Footnote (page 89):
1 The fraternal biographer continues,
“It
may be worthy of mention that, in representing
the dying stripling, Rossetti was thinking of
the premature fate of Oliver Madox Brown, a
youth of singular promise, both as painter
and as writer, who ended his brief life of
less than twenty years in the November of
1874—a bitter grief to his father,
Rossetti's life-long friend, Ford Madox
Brown. This design Rossetti
characteristically wrote of as being meant to
be a sort of painted
Cloud
Confines
(the name will be recognized as that of one
of his poems). “I don't know,”
he added, “whether it would do to paint, being
moonlight.” The
Sphinx
seems to me an
intractable subject, and to be overloaded with
trite allegory that is unworthy of the
inventor of so many subtleties, while the
design, as such, is inferior and confused,
and therefore, apart from the moonlight which
would have to be dealt with, I am convinced
that it would not do to paint.”
La
bella Mano
belongs to Mr.
F. S. Ellis, who lent it to the Academy in
1883, No. 35. Here, the Lady with the Fine
Hands, is washing them at a cistern and basin
of brass, while two white-robed and
red-winged Loves are in attendance, one
holding the towel in readiness, the other
having on a silver tray the adornments for
her “bella mano.” A mirror behind
her head reflects the room and bed; these
elements are deep in tone; a fire is burning
in the chimney nook. The pictorial object of the
work is to show the brilliancy of flesh
tints, or carnations and whites relieved on a
ground subdued to the eye, and yet everywhere
replete with varied colour and material. In
these respects the work is a marvel of art,
the whole glowing in rich light, and being
intensely deep in tone, and wealthy in
colour. The sentiment of the design, as in
most of Rossetti's pictures, lies in the
face, and is discoverable in the light of a
woman's hope, which fills the eyes, and has
given a warmer rose tint to the full and
slightly parted lips, that are red in their
vitality. The face is slightly raised, and
put sideways towards us, the figure standing
in profile, so that the masses of deep golden
hair which project from her brow, cast shadows
on her upper features.
Dis
Manibus
,
or
The Roman
Widow
, I describe from notes made in
Rossetti's studio in 1875, and published in
the
Athenæum
of that year, soon
after it was finished. The title here
suggests the subject, that of a Roman widow
seated in the funeral vault of her family,
beside her husband's cinerary urn, the
inscription on which is headed by the
invariable words “Dis
Manibus.”
She, as in some classical examples, is playing
on two harps an elegy “To the Divine
Manes” of the departed. She is robed in
white, the mourning of noble ladies in Rome.
The antique forms of the harps are rendered
in tortoiseshell chiefly, with
fillings of ebony or dark horn embossed
in silver. She is seated right fronting us,
and leans a little sideways to our left. On
this side one of
The Sphinx.
Figure: ‘The youth, about to put his question, falls in
sudden swoon from the toils of the journey & the over-mastering
emotion; the man leans forward over his falling body and peers into
the eyes of the sphinx to read her answer; but those eyes are turned
upward and fixed without response on the unseen sky which is out of the
picture & only shows in the locked bay of quivering sea a cold
reflection of the moon. Meanwhile the old man is seen still labouring
upwards and about in his turn to set foot on the platform, eager to
the last for that secret which is never to be known. In the symbolism
of the picture (which is clear and gives its title founded on Shakespeare's
great line To be or not to be, that is the question) the swoon of the
youth may be taken to shadow forth the mystery of early death, one of
the hardest of all impenetrable dooms.’
(Letter to F.G. Stephens, Unpublished, Bodleian Library, Oxford)Surtees p. 140
the harps is reared on the arm of the bench,
its horns are twined with pale wild roses, and
beneath the urn is trained a festoon of garden
roses. About the urn is bound the widow's wedding
girdle of silver, dedicated
to the dead or to the living husband. The
second harp is on the bench on her left; her
lean pale fingers seem to stray
“preluding” a mournful strain
upon the strings of the instruments, and her very
eyes seem to listen; her lips we might expect
would part and emit a faint funereal hymn.
The moment chosen must be supposed to belong
to one of those special occasions when the
Romans solemnized mortuary rites, and which
recurred at intervals during the year. The
key colour of this picture is warm white,
with a saffron hue; this obtained in the
dress of the lady, and is varied by the less
warm colour of the veil which swathes her
head and throat, as well as by the intense
pallor of the carnations. She has turned back
the veil from her face so that we see the
warm young features are sunken, a little
pale, but still beautiful.
The Sea
Spell
, painted from
Miss Wilding, and intended as a sort of
companion to
Veronica Veronese
, for
which she likewise sat, shows the Siren
seated playing her lute, which is shadowed by
the apple-tree and crowned with a
rose-wreath. She is bending before the
instrument which is upright before her; over
her head is a white bird, attracted by the
music and rushing through the air to listen
to it. Behind are glimpses of the sunlit
ocean and a blue firmament, vividly lighted.
The witch is with abstracted eyes listening
to her own music, and the vague charm of her
ruddy lips seems to attest that she, urged by
Fate, wove the enchantment that brought
mariners to ruin, while she swings her body
to the chanted cadence. Rossetti's sonnet
illustrating this picture
1 begins
- “Her lute hangs shadowed on the apple tree
- While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
- Between its chords.”
The portrait of
Miss Christina
Rossetti
, which is the last of our
illustrations, belongs to the one brother, to
whom we are indebted for it as well as for
the plate after
Lilith
, and was drawn
by the other brother of the lady whose choice
verses have been, like so many pearls in a
carcanet, strung in various editions of her
poems. It will therefore be trebly welcome to
the reader. It was drawn with coloured
crayons, and in, to the best of my belief,
1877; in 1883 it appeared as No. 43 at
Transcribed Footnote (page 92):
1 The
Sea-Spell
,
which belonged to Mr.
Leyland, and was sold with the rest of his
pictures in May, 1892, for 420 guineas, was
dated 1877, and exhibited at the Burlington
Club in 1883.
the Burlington Club's exhibition of
Rossetti's pictures, drawings, and studies.
It attests that Time had not effaced from the
lady's face the likeness of the Virgin in
“
Ecce Ancilla Domini!
” of 1849,
and it remains
Christina Rossetti.
Figure: “Head and shoulders, head almost facing, the eyes looking to right,
wearing a head-dress of some dark material which falls to the back of
her shoulders.”
Surtees p. 184
the best portrait of our poet-painter's
devoted and constant sister, his refuge in
dark and painful days which she shared with
his mother and brother, and one of the
attendants of his latest hours.
Those hours witnessed the removal
from amongst us of one of the most splendid
geniuses of which the English nation can
boast. They arrived all too soon after the
portrait of his sister was completed, that is
in about four years, during which period
Rossetti finished some less important works,
replicas and new versions of several which
have been mentioned in this text, and began
certain examples which he did not live to
complete. He had the great satisfaction of
knowing that his fame as a poet was
prodigiously extended by means of
Ballads
and Sonnets
, published in September, 1881,
while the sale in the same month of his
Dante's Dream
to the Liverpool Gallery
affirmed that his honours as a painter would
lose nothing in the future. It would have
increased his happiness could he have known
that in a few years two of the most
characteristic of his pictures would be added
to the National Gallery. He died at
Birchington, Kent, on the 9th of April, 1882.
To his memory this text is one of the
tributes of an old friend.
Beatrice and her Nurse.
Figure: “Rough sketch of a young girl with arms folded over her breast
walking with an old woman who wears a high head-dress and holds a feather
fan; both figures are moving to the left.”
Surtees p. 222
Transcription Gap: pages 96-97 (index)
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