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June 01 Study of GuinevereThis is a study of Guinevere for Sir Launcelot in the Queen's Chamber.
May 10 Call and I follow
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Found, An American Quaker: Samuel Bancroft Jr. (1840-1915)
Monna Vanna, 1866
Portrait of Alexa Wilding, Profile to the Right, 1866
After the death of his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, in 1862, Rossetti lived in Chelsea where he was a neighbour and friend of Whistler. The aesthetic paintings and drawings he made here became a formative influence on the development of ‘art for art’s sake’ in Britain; his sensuous portraits of female figures evoking the art of the Venetian Renaissance. Dante Gabriel Rossetti chose a variety of voluptuous models during the 1860s to sit for him, including Alexa Wilding and his mistress, Fanny Cornforth. Although Virginia Surtees has not identified the sitter, it is, in our opinion, a portrait of Alexa Wilding. This portrait head clearly compares to her likeness in Monna Vanna (1866), Veronica Veronese (1870-2) and The Bower Meadow (1871-2). Rossetti’s stylised heads are naturally a poetic fusion of the ideal model and his mental picture of his muse.
Frederick Sandys had first met the Pre-Raphaelites in 1857 through his lampoon of Sir John Everett Millais’ St Isumbras at the Ford, a print entitled The Nightmare, which contained caricatures of Millais, Rossetti, Hunt and Ruskin. Sandys was a superb draughtsman and a master of the pastel technique. It was he who encouraged and taught Rossetti to work in coloured chalks and it was no coincidence that Rossetti produced a series of strong chalk heads and full-length subjects in 1866, the year that Frederick Sandys stayed at his house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.
The Last of England, 1860
Through rainbow tears she sees a sunnier gleam,
She cannot see a void where he will be.
Lorenzo and Isabella detail, 1849
Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel!
Lorenzo, a young palmer in Love's eye!
They could not in the self-same mansion dwell
Without some stir of heart, some malady;
They could not sit at meals but feel how well
It soothed each to be the other by.
These brethren having found by many signs
What love Lorenzo for their sister had,
And how she lov'd him too, each unconfines
His bitter thoughts to other, well nigh mad
That he, the servant of their trade designs
Should in their sister's love be blithe and glad
When 'twas their plan to coax her by degrees
To some high noble and his olive trees.
Keats's source for this poem was a tale by the 14th century Italian author, Boccaccio.
La Pia. Dante. 1868-1880
And there from the long road hast rested thee,”
(After the second spirit said the third,)
“Remember me who am La Pia: me
From Siena sprung & by Maremma dead:
This in his inmost heart well knoweth he
With whose fair jewel I was ringed and wed.”
translated by DG Rossetti
The verse was eventually printed on the frame of the picture.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddal (1829-1862)
Elizabeth Siddal at ArtMagick
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel - every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
from 'My Beautiful Lady'
by Thomas Woolner (1825–1892)
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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Saint George and the Princess Sabra, 1862 & 1857
The Rossetti Archive (St. George and the Princess Sabra)
The Rossetti Archive (The Wedding of St. George and the Princess Sabra)
Supported web browsers for The Rossetti Archive include Mozilla Firefox and Mac Safari.
Literary
The legend of St. George (the patron saint of England) and the dragon is essentially the same as the legend of Perseus and Andromeda. Widely dispersed as the legend is, all versions include the following bare narrative. Terrorized by a dragon, a town is forced by the monster to sacrifice a young girl each day to him. When St. George learns of this and that the Princess Sabra is his latest intended victim, he attacks the monster, finally defeats him, and completes his triumph with his marriage to the princess.
The Day Dream (Portrait of Jane Morris), 1880
The Day-dream
Still bear young leaflets half the summer through;
From when the robin 'gainst the unhidden blue
Perched dark, till now, deep in the leafy core,
The embowered throstle's urgent wood-notes soar
Through summer silence. Still the leaves come new;
Yet never rosy-sheathed as those which drew
Their spiral tongues from spring-buds heretofore.
Dreams even may spring till autumn; yet none be
Like woman's budding day-dream spirit-fann'd.
Lo! tow'rd deep skies, not deeper than her look,
She dreams; till now on her forgotten book
Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.
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