The pamphlet contains WMR's and Swinburne's separate critical remarks on the Royal Academy Exhibition for 1868. Swinburne devotes six pages to DGR's work (pages 46-51). While the focus is on the paintings, Swinburne quotes three of DGR's related sonnets in the course of his discussion.
It is well known that the painter of whom I now propose
to speak has never suffered exclusion of acceptance at the hand
of any academy. To such acceptance or such rejection all
other men of any note have been and may be liable. It is
Clothed in soft white garments, she draws out through a comb
the heavy mass of hair like thick spun gold to fullest length;
her head leans back half sleepily, superb and satiate with its own
beauty; the eyes are languid, without love in them or hate; the
sweet luxurious mouth has the patience of pleasure fulfilled and
complete, the warm repose of passion sure of its delight.
Outside, as seen in the glimmering mirror, there is full summer; the
deep and glowing leaves have drunk in the whole strength of
the sun. The sleepy splendour of the picture is a fit raiment
for the idea incarnate of faultless fleshly beauty and peril of
pleasure unavoidable. For this serene and sublime sorceress
there is no life but of the body; with spirit (if spirit there be)
she can dispense. Were it worth her while for any word to
divide those terrible tender lips, she too might say with the
hero of the most perfect and exquisite book of modern times—
Mademoiselle de Maupin
“
Of evil desire or evil impulse she has nothing; and nothing
of good. She is indifferent, equable, magnetic; she charms
and draws down the souls of men by pure force of absorption,
in no wise wilful or malignant; outside herself she cannot
live, she cannot even see: and because of this she attracts and
subdues all men at once in body and in spirit. Beyond the
mirror she cares not to look, and could not.
So, rapt in no spiritual contemplation, she will sit to all
After this faint essay at an exposition, the weighty and melodious words in which the painter has recast his thought (words inscribed on the frame of the picture) will be taken as full atonement for my shortcomings; I fear only that the presumption and insufficience of the commentator will now be but the more visible.
LADY LILITH.Swinburne notes that his 1868 text is taken from the frame of the exhibited picture “ ” The text, which was the first printing of the poem, varies from the later printings in lines 2, 9, and 11. Lady Lilith. 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 of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold. Rose, foxglove, poppy are her flowers: for where Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent And soft-shed fingers and soft 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.
The other picture gives the type opposite to this; a head of
serene and spiritual beauty, severe and tender, with full and
heavy hair falling straight in grave sweet lines, not like
Lilith's exuberant of curl and coil; with carven column of
throat, solid and round and flawless as living ivory; with still
and sacred eyes and pure calm lips; and imperial votaress truly,
in maiden meditation: yet as true and tangible a woman of
mortal mould, as ripe and firm of flesh as her softer and
splendid sister. The mystical emblems behind her show her
power upon love and death to make them loyal servants to
the law of her lofty and solemn spirit. Here also the artist
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 Thy 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!
After these all weaker words must fall flat enough; but something of further description may yet be allowed. Behind this figure of the ideal and inaccessible beauty, an inlaid wall of alternate alabaster and black marble bears inwrought on its upper part the rival twin emblems of love and death; over the bare carven skull poppies impend, and roses over the sweet head with bound blind eyes: in her hand is the palm-branch, a sceptre of peace and of power. The cadence of colour is splendid and simple, a double trinity of green and red, the dim red robe, the deep red poppies, the soft red roses; and again the green veil wound about with wild flowers, the green down of poppy-leaves, the sharper green of rose-leaves.
An unfinished picture of Beatrice (the “sitting alone, made as a widow.”
Love, one
side, comes bearing in his hand a heart in flames, having his
eyes bent upon Dante's; on the other side is Dante, looking
sadly across the way towards Love. In this picture the light
is subdued and soft, touching tenderly from behind the edges
of Beatrice's hair and raiment; in the others there is a full
fervour of daylight. The great picture
of
VENUS VERTICORDIA.She hath it in her hand to give it 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; But if she give 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 through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.
Another work, as yet incomplete, is a
study of
Wide and far apart as lie their provinces of work, their tones
of thought and emotion, the two illustrious artists of whom I
have just said a short and inadequate word have in common
one supreme quality of spirit and work, coloured and moulded
in each by his individual and inborn force of nature; the love
of beauty for the very beauty's sake, the faith and trust in it
as in a god indeed. This gift of love and faith, now rare
enough, has been and should be ever the common Rien n'est vrai que le beau; this should be the beginning
and the ending of their belief, held in no small or narrow
sense, but in the largest and most liberal scope of meaning.
Beauty may be strange, quaint, terrible, may play with pain
as with pleasure, handle a horror till she leave it a delight; she
forsakes not such among her servants as Webster or as Goya.
No good art is unbeautiful; but much able and effective work
The End.