DGR's letter to Jane Morris of 10 March 1875 specifies the date of this finished drawing and
gives his explanation of the picture: “ I have been finishing the Sphinx design I
spoke of, and shall enjoy showing it to you. The idea is that of Man questioning the Unknown,
and I shall call it either The Question or The Sphinx and her Questioner, but I think on the
whole the shorter title is the better. In the design, a youth, a mature man, and an old man,
have made their way up a rocky ascent to a platform embowered in laurels which is the shrine
of the Sphinx. The youth has fallen in death before he can question the oracle - the man peers
into her eyes with his question, but they have no answer, staring at the unseen sky beyond the
horizon of the picture - a creek of sea hemmed in with sharp rocks and having only the image
of the moon reflected in its centre. Meanwhile the old man still toils up towards the Sphinx,
eager to the last for her secret. I have made the design nude, but propose to drape it in some
degree when I paint it, which I fancy must be on rather a small scale, for two reasons; one
being that to sell a big picture without women in it would be a double difficulty, and the
other that a moonlight subject on a large scale is always monotonous. The subject is in fact
the same as that of my little poem ‘The Cloud’ [i.e.,
F. G. Stephens wrote a notice in the Athenaeum (14 August 1875) on the subject of some
recent DGR pictures. This article, like so many by Stephens about DGR's work, was largely
derived from DGR's own notes, as we see in this case from DGR's long letter to Stephens of 10
August in which he supplies Stephens the following description of the picture: “In
this design, the subject represents three Greek pilgrims— a youth, a full-grown
man, and an old man, consulting the Sphinx as an Oracle. In the distance, between sharp rocks
on either side, in a difficult creek of the sea, is seen the ship which has brought them from
afar to the nearest navigable point; and thence they have clambered over the crags to the
elevated rocky platform on which the Sphinx is enthroned in motionless mystery, her bosom
jutting out between the gaunt limbs of a rifted laurel-tree, and her lion-claws planted
against them. The youth, about to put his question, falls in sudden swoon from the toils of
the journey and an overmastering 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 and 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 Shakspere'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.” ((see Fredeman,
DGR's planned but unexecuted painting was clearly an effort to rehearse Ingres's great
painting on the same subject,
DGR con 107 illustrazioni
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
Dante Gabriel Rossetti