Plate
I. The Daydream Frontispiece
From the Ionidès Collection at South Kensington
Museum
Page
II. Ecce Ancilla Domini 14
From the Oil Painting In the Tate Gallery
III. Dante drawing the Angel 24
From the Water-Colour in the Taylorian Museum,
Oxford
IV. Beata Beatrix 34
From the Oil Painting in the Tate Gallery
V. The Bower Meadow 40
From the Oil Painting in the collection of the late Sir
John Milburn, Bart., Acklington, Northumberland
VI. The Borgia Family 50
From the Water-Colour In South Kensington Museum
VII. Dante's Dream 60
From the Oil Painting in the Walker Art Gallery,
Liverpool
VIII. Astarte Syriaca 70
From the Oil Painting in the Manchester Art Gallery
[Illustration: Rossetti]
I
About the middle of the nineteenth century Europe woke to the fact that
Art, despite its pretention, had lost all touch with tradition and,
like a blind man deprived of his staff, stood fumbling for direction.
The necessary "point d'appui" took shape in a return to nature. This
return was effected by very different means according to the country
and artistic milieu in which it occurred. In England it was really a
revival of the schools of painting that preceded Raphael and resulted
in grafting the complicated passions of our century upon the naïve
outlook of the early Italians. The more logical mind of the Frenchman
saw that it was not enough to look at nature through the eyes of the
Primitives. The point of view had perforce changed and all that it
was necessary to borrow from the early schools was the sincerity they
brought to the interpretation of phenomena.
We have been told that, in contrast to the continental movement, the
realism of the Pre-Raphaelites was applied only to noble subjects. But
what is a noble subject? The distinction is a purely literary one.
There are no noble subjects in art; there are only harmonies of line
and colour. For example this school would prefer the rose to the
cabbage as a subject, on account of the symbols attached to it. It is
the Queen of Flowers, the Mystic Rose, &c., &c. But is the rose greater
than the cabbage from a purely pictorial point of view? It depends
entirely upon how far the painter is able to reveal the beauty, the
harmony of form and colour of either. The symbolistic appanage of the
rose will not suffice of itself to make a picture, nor for the lack of
these symbols may we condemn the cabbage.
The realism of the Pre-Raphaelites developed an absorption in detail,
a "bit by bit" painting that was too often detrimental to the whole.
In the best works of the early Italians the unity is, in spite of that
attention to detail, admirably maintained--in other words the values
are preserved. It was not long, however, before Rossetti quitted the
path of the Pre-Raphaelites for a broader one. His paintings are
entirely symbolistic, therefore literary. Given the personality of an
artist equally gifted as painter and poet, this need not surprise us.
Indeed, seeing that Rossetti's pictorial conceptions are exclusively
literary, he might be considered as more dominantly a writer than a
painter; and this is the light in which he saw himself. We might say
he painted "sentiments" and add that sentiment is the property of
literature, but in Rossetti's case they have at least the advantage of
intensity. They come straight from life, for all his art is more or
less connected with the tragedy of his own existence. Herein lies the
value of Rossetti's works as artistic creations.