Golden Water

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

General Description

Date: 1858

Bibliography

◦ Marillier, DGR: An Illustrated Memorial, 100

◦ WMR, DGR Designer and Writer, 48

◦ Sharp, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 163

◦ Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné, 61 (no. 107).

Scholarly Commentary

Literary

The picture references a climactic moment in the Arabian Nights' “The Story of Two Sisters Who Were Jealous of Their Younger Sister”: (tale number 20 in the Lang translation) when the Princess Parisadé carries a black barrel containing the golden water and is about to sprinkle it on the black stones into which her two brothers had been magically transformed, in order to return them to themselves. The Golden Water of the story and the picture has such power that “a single drop into a basin [will] shoot up into a fountain, which will never be exhausted, nor will the basin ever overflow.” The Princess is the daughter of the story's “Younger Sister”.

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