WMR's early commentary on the picture is much to the point: “The name La
Ghirlandata may be translated ‘The Garlanded Lady,’ or ‘The
Lady of the Wreath.’ The personage is represented singing, as she plays on a
musical instrument; two youthful angels listen. The flowers which are prominent in the picture
were intended by my brother for the poisonous monkshood: I believe he made a mistake, and
depicted larkspur instead. I never heard him explain the underlying significance of this
picture: I suppose he purposed to indicate, more or less, youth, beauty, and the faculty for
art worthy of a celestial audience, all shadowed by mortal doom”
(
<xref doc="a.s32.rap">La Belle Dame Sans Merci</xref>
as well as to several of the late, ominous pictures, like
<xref doc="a.s234.rap">Ligeia Siren</xref>
.
DGR was working on the picture in early July 1873, and by the middle of the month it had
been paid for by William Graham (£840) and was, DGR told Charles Howell,
“well advanced”. On August 23 he wrote to Watts-Dunton that
“I have now nearly finished [a picture] I call La Ghirlandata. It contains three
heads—a lady playing on a harp and two angels listening—and an infinity
of other material—and in brilliancy is more like the Beloved than any other picture
of mine you have seen. It belongs to Graham, who wants it in Scotland, but perhaps I may send
it for a few days to London to show to a few”. He described the picture to Treffry
Dunn in these terms: “The one I am doing for him now is not B[lesse]d Dam[oze]l but
that figure playing on the queer old harp which I drew from Miss W[ilding] when you were here
with her. The two heads of little May are at the top of the picture. It will really be a
successful thing I am sure now, and is getting fast towards completion, but I have not yet got
the frame. It ought to put Graham in a good humour and I am glad he is to have it as he is the
only buyer I have who is worth a damn.” And to William Bell Scott he wrote even
more enthusiastically: “For some six weeks past I have been at work solely on a
picture now just finished and called La Ghirlandata—about 4 feet by 3. It is a
woman playing on a sort of solid harp I have—an instrument stringed on both sides
and very paintable in form. Behind her two angels lean through foliage and listen, and there
is an immensity of work in the picture which is quite full of flowers and leaves all most
carefully done from nature. It is the greenest picture in the world I believe—the
principal figure being dressed in green and completely surrounded with glowing green foliage.
I believe it is my very best picture—no inch of it worse than another.”
(see
DGR made a