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Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood

WikipediA | In the Bleak Midwinter

Pandora
(For a Picture)

What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine,
   The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
   Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
In its own likeness make thee half divine?
Was it that Juno's brow might stand a sign
   For ever? and the mien of Pallas be
   A deadly thing? and that all men might see
In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?

What of the end? These beat their wings at will,
The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,—
   Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
Aye, clench the casket now! Whither they go
Thou mayst not dare to think: nor canst thou know
   If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.

The Rossetti Archive (1881 text)

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From Notes on Song of Songs (#5768)

Wait, listen to me -
   the rain is over, gone.
   You are no longer alone.
   Your eyes an expanse of periwinkle blue.
   Your love stands before you,
   his muscles linden pillars,
   your cheeks flush, unveil
   from dusk to dawn's rosy fingers.

When he comes to you,
   as your temple,
   with the fading light of day -
   your love will be pure saffron
   in a bed of spices,
   his mouth on yours a web of liquid gold.

© susan | chiaroscuro | 9/15/2007

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908)
A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895.   1895.
  
I love my Lady; she is very fair; 
Her brow is wan, and bound by simple hair; 
  Her spirit sits aloof, and high, 
  But glances from her tender eye 
    In sweetness droopingly.
 
As a young forest while the wind drives through, 
My life is stirr’d when she breaks on my view; 
  Her beauty grants my will no choice 
  But silent awe, till she rejoice 
    My longing with her voice.
 
Her warbling voice, though ever low and mild, 
Oft makes me feel as strong wine would a child; 
  And though her hand be airy light 
  Of touch, it moves me with its might, 
    As would a sudden fright. 
 
A hawk high pois’d in air, whose nerv’d wing-tips 
Tremble with might suppress’d, before he dips, 
  In vigilance, scarce more intense 
  Than I, when her voice holds my sense 
    Contented in suspense.
 
Her mention of a thing, august or poor, 
Makes it far nobler than it was before: 
  As where the sun strikes life will gush, 
  And what is pale receive a flush, 
    Rich hues, a richer blush.
 
My Lady’s name, when I hear strangers use, 
Not meaning her, to me sounds lax misuse; 
  I love none but my Lady’s name; 
  Moud, Grace, Rose, Marian, all the same, 
    Are harsh, or blank and tame.
 
My Lady walks as I have watch’d a swan 
Swim where a glory on the water shone: 
  There ends of willow braches ride, 
  Quivering in the flowing tide, 
    By the deep river’s side.
 
Fresh beauties, howsoe’er she moves, are stirr’d: 
As the sunn’d bosom of a humming bird 
  At each pant lifts some fiery hue, 
  Fierce gold, bewildering green or blue; 
    The same, yet ever new....

The Rossetti Archive ('My Beautiful Lady,' Scholarly Commentary)

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Literature
William Michael Rossetti, Fine Arts: The British Institution, Spectator 9.1442, 16 Feb. 1856, page 195-196: Mr. Collinson's 'Son of the Soil'-a lusty labourer seated in a public-house with his pewter pot of beer before him, and behind him an advertisement for men to serve in the Army Works Corps- is an exact study from nature.

Exhibition History
London, The British Institution, 1856, number 375

Description / Expertise
One of the seven original founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, James Collinson was a fellow student of Millais, Rossetti and Holman Hunt at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1847, Rossetti had noticed his exhibit, The Charity Boy's Debut, for its attention to detail when it hung at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Subsequently, Collinson was persuaded by him to become a founder member of the Brotherhood.

James Collinson was, according to Rossetti a born stunner. In spite of his good looks, he was a quiet, intensely religious young man whom the other members of the PRB nicknamed 'the dormouse'. Collinson's The Child Jesus was one of the four etchings in the Pre-Raphaelites' publication, The Germ, and his most important Pre-Raphaelite painting, The Renunciation of The Queen of Hungary (1850), was also a religious subject. Collinson fell in love with Rossetti's sister, the poet Christina Rossetti, and converted from Roman Catholicism to the Church of England in order to be accepted as her finance. He ended the engagement in the spring of 1850, when he reverted back to the Roman faith and resigned from the Brotherhood, on the grounds that he could not, as a Catholic, assist in spreading the artistic opinions of those who are not. He sold all his artistic equipment and entered the Jesuit College at Stonyhurst in Lancashire as a novice.

It would seem that he did continue to paint during his training for the priesthood, as he exhibited again at the Royal Academy in 1855. By the following year, his relationship with William Michael Rossetti had been restored sufficiently for him to provide paintings for the Exhibition of British Art that was to tour America during 1857 and 1858, to show in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. It was intended to go to Washington, D.C. but rain in Boston damaged some pictures and they came back to England. The tour was arranged by William Michael Rossetti and Ernest Gambart.(1)

A Son of the Soil was Collinson's exhibit for the 1856 British Institution exhibition. Painted in pure glazes over a white ground, the work was in keeping with the Brotherhoods' original philosophies. These were outlined in the Germ in 1850: Sincerity- perfection in small things; To choose for the subjects of the paintings important issues: religious, literary or from modern life- usually with a moral message aimed at a contemporary audience; and they followed the teachings of John Ruskin, especially Truth to Nature. The labourer sits pensively with his pewter mug of beer under a poster for the newly formed 'Army Works Corps', initiated to encourage rural workers to enlist for the Crimean War in 1855. Men were needed for a joint military and civilian project to build a railway from the port of Balaclava to Sebastopol. The Balaclava Military Railway moved two hundred tons of stores daily; returning trains evacuated casualties.

In its confrontation of a contemporary social issue, A Son of The Soil, like Collinson's earlier painting, Answering the Emigrant's Letter (1850), presages later ideas and images of British social realism such as August Leopold Egg's Past and Present (1858) and Madox Brown's Work (completed in 1865). Abraham Solomon, in his Academy exhibit of 1854, uses the same device- a social message in a poster (Second Class- The Parting, now in the Australian National Gallery in Canberra).


1. Jason Rosenfeld in his article for Apollo Magazine, May 1997

Silent Night (Gaelic: Oíche Chiúin) | Enya | YouTube 03:47

Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (Silent Night, Holy Night) | The London Symphony Orchestra | MP3 128k 01:21

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.

~Dante Gabriel Rossetti