DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
I can hardly say what it was that gave to my early efforts in journalism
a decided bent towards the study of Art; for although my first
experiments, as I have already said, were made as a dramatic critic, I
very soon found myself employing the best of my energies in another
direction.
My elder sister had already begun a serious study of painting, and that
no doubt partly influenced my taste as a boy. Not that my keen interest
in the drama ever lapsed, even during the period when I was qualifying
myself as an Art Critic; but it lay dormant for a time, in so far at
least as my journalistic occupation was concerned; and apart from my
daily work upon the _Globe_, and those lighter essays on general and
social topics contributed to the _Examiner_ and the _Saturday Review_,
my main energies for several years to come were destined to be employed
in the criticism of pictorial art.
It is not quite easy now to realise the extraordinary interest with
which the annual exhibitions at the Royal Academy were then greeted by
those whose minds had been awakened to the new movement in painting.
I can remember year after year, from the age of sixteen, presenting
myself on each opening Monday at eight o’clock in the morning at the
doors of Burlington House, and snatching an hour there before making my
way to the City. The pre-Raphaelite movement had begotten a freshly
awakened spirit, not only in the workers themselves, but in those who
worshipped them. The advent of Ruskin had kindled a new flame which made
a study of Art something more than mere dilettantism. It was with
something almost of religious fervour that we awaited the advent of a
new Millais or Holman Hunt, for it was then only on rare occasions that
we had the chance of seeing an example of the work of Rossetti.
Art in more recent days has come to make, even in the hands of its
greatest professors, a more technical appeal, and those of us who are
not of the calling are now somewhat sternly bidden to confine ourselves
to dumb appreciation, and are severely warned not to venture to deliver
opinions on matters in which we are not qualified by special study.
This is the fate of all art, either literary or pictorial, at those
seasons of impaired vitality when it falls under the domination of men
of the “métier.” It is the assured sign of a passing period of
decadence. The moment when the artist has missed the spirit which links
his work with the wider emotional movement of his generation, is always
the moment when he most zealously and most loudly acclaims the
detachment and independence of his calling.
He is always most eager to be judged by the comrades of his craft when
he realises, though perhaps only half consciously, that his appeal is
no longer to the simple. It is the moment when art leans towards
bric-a-brac, when the painter or the sculptor is no longer spurred by
the larger desire to have his work understanded of the people, when he
is content in each little coterie with the appreciation of his disciples
who in their turn aim at nothing better than the approbation of their
master. That any work worthy of the name, whether in literature,
painting, or sculpture, must of necessity conform to the irrefutable
laws of the medium in which it is expressed, is little better than an
outworn platitude. But to concede so much is only to admit the
inevitable limitations of every art; it is the acceptance of its
inherent conditions, not the definition of its essence; and the
endeavour to refuse to artists rightly equipped for their task the
larger function of imaging the wider passions of life, is simply to rob
the record of the past of its greatest and most enduring achievements.
For my own part I have never made any pretence of bowing before these
inordinate pretensions of the masters of mere technique. They form part
of a gospel that has always been widely preached: in my youthful day it
spread upon its banner the specious motto of “Art for Art’s sake”; but
it reappears under many disguises, and rests ultimately and always upon
the assumption that the men of the “métier” are the sole and exclusive
judges of the worth of any artistic product.
Certainly, if this dictum had prevailed in the time I am recalling, the
great movement which won all our youthful enthusiasm, a movement beyond
question the greatest and most influential in the Art of Europe during
the nineteenth century, would never have found strength to develop.
Never did young men of their calling meet with more embittered
opposition from the accepted masters of the time; and if it had not been
that a true impulse inspiring their work stirred a deeper response in a
section of the public than was accorded to them by their
fellow-painters, they would most surely have lacked the encouragement
and the praise which to every artist is as the breath of his life.
The thought and feeling of the time, as it found expression in every
art, was moved by something deeper than the merely artistic impulse.
That much-bespattered Victorian Era, whatever its limitations, could
claim at least this cardinal virtue, that the men who are its foremost
representatives were able to forge anew the links that bind life and art
together. The gifts they owned were too great to let them stand in any
fear of the threatened danger of “the literary idea”; and if
occasionally they had to acknowledge a measure of failure, the fear of
such failure never drove them to take refuge within the safe confines of
mere technical accomplishment.
The spirit of poetry, re-awakened in literature, had found its way into
art, and themselves the comrades of the poets of the time, the leaders
of the little band whose efforts were destined to revolutionise English
painting, gladly confessed in their own work, though in varying measure,
the newly kindled ambition to embody in art that quality of imagination
that had hitherto found expression only in literature.
And this movement towards a wider idealism was helped, not hindered, by
the strenuous desire for the faithful presentment of actual reality
which stood as a dominant article of faith in the pre-Raphaelite creed.
At the head of this revolution in taste, which has left a lasting mark,
not only upon the painting of England, but also in some degree upon the
art of all Continental nations, two names I think stand pre-eminent,
those of G. F. Watts and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. From them came the
poetic inspiration which lay at the root of all the greatest
achievements of the time. Others there were, like Millais, more greatly
endowed with the painter’s gift, but even he, whose genius was destined
ultimately to find its own more congenial exercise in portraiture and
landscape, confessed in his earlier days the commanding domination of
men who, in intellect and imagination, were his leaders and his masters.
The work of Mr. Watts, based on an earlier tradition, was open to all
the world, but it was only by rare chance and good fortune that the
student of that day had the opportunity of making acquaintance with the
paintings of Rossetti. I remember it was while I was on Circuit that I
had my first sight of some examples of his work in the collection of Mr.
Rae of Birkenhead, and there, too, I found pictures of Madox Brown,
another of the group who did not publicly exhibit. I think it was a
study of Mr. Rae’s collection that induced me to publish in the _Globe_
newspaper a series of articles on painters of the day over the signature
of “Ignotus” in the year 1873.
Certainly it was the publication of these papers that formed the
occasion of my making the acquaintance of several of the artists whose
talent I had endeavoured to appreciate. It was my intention at the time
to refashion the series and to issue them as a separate volume, and with
that view I wrote to several of them asking them for some personal
details of the earlier days of their studentship. The answers I received
were in nearly every case characteristic, and it was by means of my
correspondence with Rossetti that I afterwards became a visitor at his
house.
It was through my friend Mr. George Hake, who was at that time staying
with him, that I first obtained a personal introduction to Rossetti, but
we were already known to each other by correspondence.
In his letter to me dated from Kelmscott in November 1873 he writes: “As
a painter, and I am ashamed at my age to say it, I have never even
approached satisfaction with my own progress until within the last five
years. My youth was spent chiefly in planning and designing, and whether
I shall still have time to do anything I cannot tell.”
As a matter of fact, Rossetti had at that date produced most of the work
by which he will be best remembered. As a lad of twenty he had painted
“The Girlhood of Mary the Virgin,” followed shortly afterwards by “The
Annunciation”; and some of the most beautiful of his drawings, the
exquisite portrait of “Miss Siddal,” the “Hamlet and Ophelia,” and the
large drawing of “Helen arming Paris,” already stood to his credit.
At the time I first knew him he had already painted “The Loving Cup,”
“The Beloved,” “Mona
[Illustration:
_Hollyer_
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
From the painting by G. F. WATTS, R.A., in the National Portrait
Gallery.
_To face page 65._
]
Vanna,” and “Lady Lilith,” and in the earlier part of the period to
which these works belonged he had given to the world that exquisite
series of watercolour paintings in which “Paolo and Francesca” and
“Heart of the Night” stand pre-eminent.
It was “The Beloved” and “Mona Vanna” that I particularly remember as
forming part of the collection of Mr. Rae, and it was mainly upon these
two paintings, and a knowledge of some of the drawings in _Black and
White_, that I had founded my first enthusiastic appreciation of the
painter’s genius.
The common impression of the time, which I indeed partly shared, was
that Rossetti’s individuality, however finely it might be endowed with
poetic imagination, was not of the most virile order. For this he
himself was in a great degree responsible. He had deliberately withdrawn
from all public exhibition of his work, and even later, when I became
connected with the establishment of the Grosvenor Gallery, he still held
fast to his earlier resolution.
The man, as I came to know him in the flesh, was therefore something of
a surprise to me, and I quickly perceived, as I learned to know him
better, that, whatever may have been the source of his reluctance to
expose himself to the fire of criticism, it certainly was not due to any
lack of masculine strength.
On the occasion of my first visit to Cheyne Walk, it was indeed the
breadth of his sympathy both in literature and art, no less than the
fineness and delicacy of his taste, that most impressed me. Those
never-to-be-forgotten evenings that I passed in his company became at
the time a sort of enchantment. His talk was assuredly more inspiring
than that of any man I have ever known; most inspiring certainly to a
youth who had ambitions of his own, for, although intolerant of any
utterance that was merely conventional, and quick to detect the smallest
lack of sincerity, he was ever patient with the expression of any
enthusiasm however crude, and was as ready to listen as to reply.
I can see him now as he used to lie coiled up on the sofa in his studio
after dinner, and can hear the deep tones of his rich voice as he ranged
widely over the fields of literature and art, always trenchant, always
earnest, yet now and again slipping with sudden wit and humour into a
lighter vein.
I remember that one afternoon as I sat beside him while he worked, the
late Mr. Virtue Tebbs came in fresh from an exhibition of the old
masters at Burlington House, and full of enthusiasm for a picture by
Turner which he insisted that Rossetti must speedily go and see.
“What is it called?” asked Rossetti.
“‘Girls Surprised while Bathing,’” replied Tebbs.
“Umph!” returned Rossetti. “Yes, I should think devilish surprised to
see what Turner had made of them.”
On one point he was always absolutely emphatic.
“A picture,” he used to say to me, “is a painted poem, and those who
deny it have simply no poetry in their nature.” It was, I think, the
absence of this quality that made him intolerant of the work of artists
like Albert Moore.
“Often pretty,” he said, “pretty enough, but sublimated café-painting
and nothing more.”
But he could be unstintedly generous in his praise, as he was searching
and even scathing in his criticism. Of Millais he once said to me:
“I don’t believe since painting began there has ever been a man more
greatly endowed with the mere painter’s power.”
And of Burne-Jones, not once, but often, he spoke in terms of the
warmest and highest praise.
“He has oceans of imagination,” he used to say, “and in this respect
there has been nobody like him since Botticelli.” And then, reverting to
his favourite maxim, he added in those round and ringing tones that
seemed at once to invite and to defy contradiction: “If, as I hold, the
noblest picture is a painted poem, then I say that in the whole history
of art there has never been a painter more greatly gifted with poetic
invention.”
Of Leighton he was wont to speak with genuine respect and sincere
appreciation. There was only one point, and that concerned not the
character but the manners of the graceful and accomplished President, on
which he was not quite tolerant.
“Leighton,” he said one night, “is undoubtedly one of the most gifted
and accomplished creatures of his time. There’s scarcely anything which
he can’t do, and can’t do well. He has, besides, a very high sense of
duty which I know to be sincere, and even as a painter he undoubtedly
deserves to some extent the position he occupies, but as to manners----”
And then in a few trenchant sentences he would give his own, not very
flattering, impression of what he considered to be Leighton’s
imperfections on this score.
At the simple dinners to which I was at that time hospitably bidden,
Rossetti, as he sat at the head of his table, was always amusing to
watch. His inability to serve any dish set before him was pathetic in
its helplessness. He would lunge at a joint as though it were a hostile
foe, driving it from one end of the dish to the other till he got it
securely cornered in its well of gravy, and then plunge his knife into
it with something of deadly ferocity.
It is related of Rossetti, though I myself was not a witness to the
incident, that on one occasion he was so entirely oblivious of the
contents of the dish before him, that, wishing to prove its value as a
specimen of oriental porcelain, he turned it over to examine the marks
on its back, and all unconsciously deposited the turbot on the
table-cloth.
I remember he very greatly admired some literary review which I had
published in the columns of the _Globe_, the subject of which I now
forget; and in the talk that followed he spoke with rare eloquence of
the poets of the dawn of the last century, dwelling especially upon
Keats, whom he knew I loved deeply, and coming at last to Landor, whose
work, however beautiful, has never warmly appealed to me.
“What do you think of Landor?” he inquired.
I answered, “It seems to me through all his poetry that his genius is
impersonal without being dramatic,” and Rossetti, who was always
generous in his appreciation of youth, answered with a phrase that sent
me home that night happy and contented.
“By Jove,” he said, “that’s the finest criticism ever made on Landor!”
I make no pretence that it was: it was enough for me then that he
thought so, or that he said so.
But this friendship with Rossetti, so dearly prized by me and so
indelible in its lasting impression, was not destined to endure for
long. During the later days of our association he was already to some
extent a sick man. Little by little the invitations, once so freely
extended to me, slackened in their warmth of hospitality, until the day
came when I realised the fact that my visits to Cheyne Walk were no
longer welcome. It was not until years afterwards that I learned the
cause, and if I give it here, it is only because it curiously
illustrates that almost morbid sensitiveness of character which lay side
by side in his nature with the most masculine grasp of the problems of
life and art.
He had, it seems, as I had learned from the lips of a friend whose
devotion to the poet endured till his death, a very high opinion of my
judgment as an art critic, and he had conceived the belief, perhaps true
at the time, that I thought more highly of the work of Burne-Jones than
of his own. And although he himself had often said to me things of
Burne-Jones’s genius which no word of mine could out-measure in generous
praise, it fretted him, in the supersensitive condition in which
suffering and ill-health had consigned him, to be reminded by my
presence of a judgment that in his own person he would not have
resented.
It may, as I have said, have been true then--though I was unaware that I
had ever betrayed the feeling to Rossetti--that Burne-Jones stood
foremost in my appreciation of the painters of the time. It is certainly
not true now in any sense that would consign Rossetti to an inferior
place; for I have come to think, in the light of later study of the two
men’s work, that, in some undefinable and yet indisputable quality of
genius, especially as exemplified in his earlier work not then so well
known to me, he stands pre-eminent among those who influenced his
generation.
As a colourist in that supreme sense in which colour is inspired by the
purpose of the design, he had in his earlier period no equal among them
all. In later life, under the shadow of suffering and sickness, the
tones he employed had lost the first glowing radiance of the dawn. But
an artist lives only by his best; and if the best of Rossetti be fairly
measured and appraised, it will, I think, be hardly possible to dispute
his right and claim to have been the foremost leader in the movement
with which his name is associated.