Morning Music Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1864 “A young woman is having her hair combed out by an attendant. A youth stands behind her, singing and playing on a cithern” (Surtees 97)
<artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p>DGR's pictures that focus on music and musical subjects are, like his portraits of women, imbedded in a set of antithetical possibilities. In a picture like this one, for example, or <xref doc="a.s47.raw"> <title level="wrk"> <hi rend="i">“To Caper Nimbly in a Lady's Chamber”</hi> , music figures as an emblem of a destructive and worldly luxuriousness. This negative valence is all the more significant because, in an ideal frame of reference, music is the proper form of a transcendental awareness. The latter perspective dominates in pictures like <hi rend="i">A Christmas Carol</hi> . <hi rend="i"> “Hist!” Said Kate the Queen</hi> is particularly relevant because it is a representation of the basic contradiction itself. A number of DGR's later paintings—for example, <hi rend="i">A Sea Spell</hi> —are clearly attempts to provoke the viewer to reflect upon this contradiction.

As the latter double work suggests, these antithetical valences pervade DGR's textual works as well. It seems clear, however, that his aesthetic aspiration is toward the achievement of a Paterian “condition of music” in his work. See for example <hi rend="i">Song and Music</hi> , <hi rend="i">The Monochord</hi> , and <hi rend="i">Chimes</hi> .

Textual History: Composition

Textual History: Revision

Production History

Reception

Iconographic

Pictorial

“The model Rossetti is following is Venetian art” ( Grieve, <hi rend="i">The Pre–Raphaelites</hi> , 287 ).

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

<hi rend="i">The Pre–Raphaelites , Tate 1984</hi> , 298-299. Sharp, <hi rend="i">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</hi> , 135-136. Surtees, <hi rend="i">A Catalogue Raisonné</hi> , vol. 1, 97 (no. 170).

Fitzwilliam Museum watercolour Morning Music Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1867 1867 watercolour 1 Morning Music DGR 1867 (circa) pencil 1 Morning Music DGR 1864 (circa) pencil 1 Morning Music DGR 1867 (circa) pen and brown ink 1 Morning Music DGR 1864 April April 1864 watercolour 2 Morning Music DGR 1864 (circa) pencil 1