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ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL (1828-1882)
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See also:ROSSETTI, See also:DANTE See also:GABRIEL (1828-1882) , See also:English poet and painter, whose full baptismal name was Gabriel See also: In Latin, however, he was already fairly proficient for his See also:age; See also:French he knew well; Italian he had spoken from childhood, and he had some See also:German lessons about 1844-45. But, although he learned enough German to be able to translate the Arnie Heinrich of See also:Hartmann von Aue, and some portions of the See also:Nibelungenlied, he afterwards forgot the See also:language almost entirely. His See also:Greek too, such as it had been, he lost. On leaving school he went (1843) to See also:Cary's See also:Art See also:Academy (previously called Sass's), near See also:Bedford Square, and thence obtained See also:admission to the Royal Academy See also:Antique School towards 1846. Of the artistic education of See also:foreign travel Rossetti had very little. But in early See also:life he made a See also:short tour in See also:Belgium, where he was indubitably much impressed and influenced by the See also:works of See also:Van See also:Eyck at See also:Ghent and Memling at See also:Bruges.
[It may be convenient to interpolate here a continuous See also:account of Rossetti's career as a pictorial artist. Being much impressed by some of the early works of Ford Madox Brown exhibited at the Academy (1841), See also:Westminster See also: Rossetti) agreed upon certain principles they desired should obtain in art. None of the five owed the initiative of his views to any of the others or to Brown, whose impulse was purely technical and connected with Rossetti only; neither Millais, Holman Hunt, J. Collinson nor F. G. See also:Stephens needed the help of Madox Brown. The point of Pre-Raphaelite See also:crystallization which had so See also:great though brief an See also:influence upon Rossetti's life and art was found at a See also:chance See also:meeting of Rossetti, Millais and Holman Hunt in Millais's See also:house in See also:Gower Street, where certain prints from early Italian frescoes were studied. The See also:enthusiasm of Rossetti led him to propose the formation of a " See also:Brother-See also:hood " with more or less definite views and much loftier aims than artists generally venture to announce. This took effect; the views of the remaining three men were already known, and in a few days they joined the new society and took their shares in the obloquy which attended the doings of Millais, Hunt and Collinson. Brown, though invited, declined to become a P-R.B. Rossetti's first effort was by means of " The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin," which in See also: Its See also:mysticism was Rossetti's own, its technique owed something to Brown. On the whole, there can be no doubt that in this work was the first pronouncement of a new view of art, a fresh technique and See also:power rapidly developing itself. Of course, the See also:style of this noteworthy and See also:epoch-marking picture was
jejune, its handling was timid, while its coloration and tonality were dry, not to say thin. Such was Rossetti's See also:advent in art under the Pre-Raphaelite banner. The picture's reception was not encouraging, nor did the next work from his hands induce him to emerge from that proud exclusiveness in which all such minds as his are content to abide. The diverse moods of the other See also:Brothers See also:chose otherwise, but of Rossetti's immediate circle it has been truly said: " It appears that of seven See also:young men and Brethren five have attained eminent positions, four of them being pre-eminent, although for years after the society was formed no single member, whatever his position might be, escaped insult, obloquy and wicked and malicious misrepresentation. The more conspicuous the Brother [e.g. Millais], the more outrageously was he attacked. " No estimate of Rossetti's genius, his See also:triumph and his life as a whole can be justly based without ample See also:allowance being made for. the circumstances which attended his advent as a painter. " Ecce Ancilla Domini!" the smaller picture which is now in the See also:National See also:Gallery of British Art at Millbank, was the one perfect outcome of the original See also:motive of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by its representative and typical member. It is replete with the mystical See also:mood which then ruled the painter's mind; that mood chose what may be called See also:virginal See also: After these pictures were finished, the outside See also:world saw no more of Rossetti as a painter until it had prepared itself to see See also:modern art from a higher See also:plane than before. In See also:December 185o there appeared the first number of The Germ, a See also:magazine (which lasted for only four See also:numbers) in which Rossetti had a leading place as the poet in See also:verse and See also:prose. The influence of See also:Robert See also:Browning upon Rossetti was more potent in The Germ than in that splendid See also:romance in See also:water-See also:colours called " The Laboratory," where a See also:court lady of the ancien regime visits an old See also:poison-monger to obtain from him a fatal potion for her See also:rival in love. This wonderful See also:gem of See also:colour, glowing in lurid and wicked passion and voluptuous See also:suggestion, marked the opening of the artist's second See also:period and signalized his departure from that phase of Pre-Raphaelitism of which " Ecce Ancilla Domini! " was the crowning achievement, and, so far as he was concerned, the artistic ne plus ultra. Millais and the other Brothers remained faithful during several years yet to come. Later in 1850, Rossetti produced the original, which is in See also:ink, of the famous "Hesterna See also:Rosa," a gambling See also:scene of men and their mistresses in a See also:tent by lamplight, while pallid See also:dawn gathers force between the trees without. Then came from his hands " See also:Borgia," which, like " The Laboratory," is in water-colours, and, like " Hesterna Rosa," is a sardonic tragedy. " How they met Themselves " came next, and, in illustrating a See also:legend similar to that of the Doppelganger, affirmed the force, the originality and the tragic passion of Rossetti's genius. Two lovers are walking in a -See also:twilight See also:wood, where they are confronted suddenly by their See also:apparitions, portending See also:death. The year 1852 produced " See also:Giotto painting Dante's Portrait," and saw a new development of the painter's mind and mood, dashed with a See also:humour not often to be seen in him. In its somewhat dry coloration it differed from the ardent See also:jewel-like glow and deeper gloom of " Borgia " and its successor and the sumptuous visions of womanhood in later pictures. " Found," Rossetti's See also:sole contribution of the sort which Mr Holman Hunt affected, was begun somewhere about this period; but this piece of pictorial moralizing (the analogue of the poet's own " Jenny "), vigorous and intensely pathetic as it is, was never really finished by its author, being, indeed, far remote from Rossetti's inner self, which was rather over-scornful of didactic art, and thoroughly indisposed towards attempts to ameliorate anybody's See also:condition by means of pictures. Nor did the stringency of naturalistic painting suit his mood or his experience. Nevertheless, what is his in the existing picture remains a masterpiece of See also:poetry with exquisitely finished parts.
Passing a few See also:fine but comparatively unimportant drawings,such as " See also:Lancelot and Guinevere at the See also:Tomb of See also:Arthur," " Lancelot looking at the Dead Lady of Shalott," " See also:Mariana of the See also:South," " See also:Sir Galahad," " The See also:Blue Closet," and various works owing subjects to the Arthurian See also:cycle of romances, we may See also:note that the artist illustrated by five cuts Poems by See also:Alfred See also:Tennyson, on which Millais and Mr 'Holman Hunt were also engaged, and which was published by See also:Moxon in 1857. As in "Ecce Ancilla Domini!" we had virginal white and morning light employed to strengthen the mystical significance of the design, so in " Borgia " Venetian voluptuousness and sensuous splendours obtained, and in " The Blue Closet " is a very potent and suggestive exercise intended to symbolize the association of colour with See also:music. The last is one of the subtlest of the artist's "inventions," and it shows how he had See also:developed upon " Borgia " an artistic sympathy which is but too likely to be " See also:caviare to the See also:general." " The See also:Wedding of St See also:George " is not so fine; nor was " Lancelot's See also:Dream of the Sangreal," Rossetti's part in the luckless decorations of the See also:Oxford See also:Union' (1857—58); nor are " Guinevere and Sir Lancelot," " Galahad in the See also:Chapel " and other Arthurian examples quite worthy of his art. " Bocca Baciata," the super-sensuous portrait of a woman, a work of wonderful See also:fire, and the pictures on the See also:pulpit at See also:Llandaff See also:Cathedral, marked the expiration of the second epoch in Rossetti's art and the beginning of a new, the third, last and most powerful of all the phases of his career. The picture " Dr See also: The See also:composition of this group, with the circular window behind their figures, is as fine as it was comparatively novel in Rossetti's. practice. Its lurid coloration was so thoroughly in See also:harmony with the pathos of the subject that in this respect the work excelled all the painter had previously produced. The same elements, energy, a sympathetic and poetic See also:scheme of colour, and composition of a fine See also:order, combined with far greater force and originality in " The See also:Bride," or " The Beloved," that magnificent See also:illustration of The See also:Song of See also:Solomon. The last named is a life-See also:size group of powerfully coloured and diversely beautiful damsels accompanying their See also:mistress with music and with song on her way to the bridegroom. This picture, as regards its brilliance, finish, the charms of four lovely faces and the splendour of its See also:lighting, occupies a great place in the highest grade of modern art of all the world. It is likewise, so far as the qualities named are concerned, the crowning piece of Rossetti's art, and stands for him much as the " Sacred and Profane Love " of See also:Titian represents that master. Very fine, indeed, but hardly so passionate and virile, is the " Beata Beatrix," now in the National Gallery of British Art with " Ecce Ancilla Domini I" which he produced thirteen years earlier. These works belong to a See also:category of fine and quite original examples, all replete with
In 1857, Rossetti, when in Oxford with William See also:Morris, conceived the design of filling the bays above the gallery in the then new Union debating See also:room (now the library) with paintings from the Morte d'Arthur, and he enlisted the co-operation of several of his artistic circle, including Burne-See also: Besides these, Rossetti produced a large number of fine things. Nearly the whole of them were exhibited by the Royal Academy and at the See also:Burlington Fine Art See also:Club in 1883, after their author's death. (F. G. S.)] Meanwhile, the literary See also:side of Rossetti had developed pari passu with his achievements as a painter. The See also:goal before the young Rossetti's eyes was to reach through art the forgotten world of old romance—that world of wonder and See also:mystery and spiritual beauty which the old masters knew and could have painted had not lack of See also:science, combined with See also:slavery to monkish traditions of See also:asceticism, crippled their strength. In that great See also:rebellion against the renascence of classicism which (after working much good and much harm) resulted in 18th-See also:century See also:materialism—in that great movement of man's soul which may be appropriately named " the Renascence of the Spirit of Wonder in Poetry and Art "—he had become the acknowledged protagonist before ever the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood was founded, and so he remained down to his last breath. It was by inevitable See also:instinct that Rossetti turned to that mysterious side of nature and man's life which to other painters of his time had been a See also:mere See also:fancy-See also:land, to be visited, if at all, on the wings of See also:sport. For if there is any permanent vitality in the Renascence of Wonder in modern See also:Europe, if it is really the inevitable expression of the soul of man in a certain See also:stage of See also:civilization (when the sanctions which have made and moulded society are found to be not See also:absolute and eternal, but relative, mundane, ephemeral and subject to the higher sanctions of unseen powers that work behind " the shows of things "), then perhaps one of the first questions to ask in regard to any imaginative painter of the 19th century is, In what relation did he stand to the newly awakened spirit of romance ? Had he a genuine and independent sympathy with that See also:temper of wonder and mystery which all over Europe had preceded and now followed the temper of See also:imitation, prosaic See also:acceptance, pseudo-classicism and domestic materialism? or was his apparent sympathy with the temper of wonder, reverence and See also:awe the result of artistic environment dictated to him by other and more powerful and original souls around him? We do not say that the mere fact of a painter's or a poet's showing but an imperfect sympathy with the Renascence of Wonder is sufficient to place him below a poet in whom that sympathy is more nearly See also:complete, but we do say that, other things being equal or anything like equal, a painter or poet of this time is to be judged very much by his sympathy with that great movement, which we See also:call the Renascence of Wonder because the word " romanticism " never did See also:express it even before it had been vulgarized by French poets, dramatists, See also:doctrinaires and literary harlequins. To struggle against the See also:prim traditions of the 18th century, the unities of See also:Aristotle, the delineation of types instead of characters, as See also:Chateaubriand, Madame de See also:Stael, See also:Balzac and See also:Hugo struggled, was well. But in studying Rossetti's works we reach the very See also: See also:Shakespeare, See also:Walter Scott, Byron, the See also:Bible were the earliest influences: then See also:Shelley, Mrs Browning, the older English and Scottish ballads, and Dante. After-wards he preferred Keats to Shelley. By 1847 he was " deep in Robert Browning." See also:Malory's Morte d'Arthur, about 1856, engrossed him; See also:Victor Hugo and De See also:Musset, among French poets, were his delight. In his last years he had an enthusiasm for See also:Chatterton. From childhood's days he had loved to compose, but The Germ (185o) contained Rossetti's first published prose or verse. In it appeared " The Blessed Damozel," the prose poem " See also:Hand and Soul," six sonnets and four lyrics. " The Blessed Damozel " was written so early as 1847 or 1848. " Sister See also:Helen " was produced in its original See also:form in 1850 or 1851. His See also:translations from the early Italian poets also began as far back as 1845 or 1846, and may have been mainly completed by 1849. He published a volume of The Early Italian Poets (Dante and his Circle) in 1861. In 1856 he contributed to the Oxford and See also:Cambridge Magazine, in which among other things the " See also:Burden of See also:Nineveh " appeared. Materials for a volume of original poetry accumulated slowly, and these having been somewhat widely read in See also:manuscript had a very great influence upon contemporary poetic literature long before their See also:appearance in See also:print. He had intended to publish a volume in 1862, but the death of his wife '(see below) caused its postponement till 1870. In poetry no less than in art what makes Rossetti so important a figure is the position he took up with regard to the modern revival of the " romantic " spirit. The Renascence of Wonder culminates in Rossetti's poetry as it culminates in his painting. The poet who should go beyond Rossetti would pass out of the See also:realm of poetry into pure mysticism, as certain of his sonnets show. Fine as are the sonnets (of which the See also:sonnet sequence, the " House of Life," in the 1881 volume, may be specially mentioned), it is in his romantic ballads that Rossetti (notwithstanding a certain ruggedness of movement) shows his greatest strength. " Sister Helen," " The Blessed Damozel," " See also:Staff and See also:Scrip," " See also:Eden See also:Bower," " See also:Troy See also:Town," " Rose Mary," as re-presenting the modern revival of the true romantic spirit, take a place quite apart from the other poetry of the time. Rossetti's poetry, and his prose too, is marked by an extra-See also:ordinary fastidiousness of expression and beauty of diction; the form and colour of his style are alike marvellous in clearness and loveliness of language. But the dominant characteristic, after all, is the underlying idea, the romantic motive. By the revival of the romantic spirit in English poetry we mean something much more than the revival, at the See also:close of the 18th century, of natural language, the See also:change discussed by See also:Wordsworth in his famous Preface, and by Coleridge in his comments thereon—that change of diction and of poetic methods which is commonly supposed to have arisen with See also:Cowper, or, if not with Cowper, with See also:Burns. The truth is that Wordsworth and Coleridge were too near the great changes in question, and they themselves took too active a part in those changes, to hold the See also:historical view of what the changes really were. Important as was the change in poetic methods which they so admirably practised and discussed, important as was the revival of natural language, which then set in, it was not nearly so important as that other revival which had begun earlier and of which it was the outcome—the revival of the romantic spirit, the Renascence of Wonder, even beneath the See also:weight of 18th-century diction, the first movement of which is certainly English, and neither German nor French in its origin, and can be traced through Chatterton, See also:Macpherson and the See also:Percy Ballads. As a mere question of methods, a reaction against the poetic diction of See also:Pope and his followers was inevitable. But, in discussing the romantic temper in relation to the overthrow of the See also:bastard classicism and didactic materialism of the 18th century, we must go deeper than mere artistic methods in poetry. When closely examined, it is in method only that the poetry of Cowper is different from the ratiocinative and unromantic poetry of See also:Dryden and Pope and their followers. Pope treated prose subjects in the ratiocinative—that is to say, the prose—temper, but in a highly artificial diction which See also:people agreed to call poetic. Cowper treated prose subjects too—treated them in the same prose temper, but used natural language; a See also:noble thing to do, no doubt. But this was only a part (and by no means the See also:chief part) of the great work achieved by English poetry at the close of last century. That period, to be sure, rendered obsolete the poetic diction of Pope; but it introduced something more See also:precious still—entire freedom from the hard rhetorical materialism imported from See also:France; it gave a new seeing to English eyes, which were opened once more to the mystery and the wonder of the universe and the romance of man's destiny; it revived, in short, the romantic spirit, but the romantic spirit enriched by all the clarity and sanity that the renascence of classicism was able to lend. Of the great movement which substituted for the didactic materialism of the 18th century the new romanticism of the 19th, the leaders were Coleridge and Scott, admirably followed by Byron, Shelley and Keats. Not that Wordsworth was a stranger to the romantic temper. The magnificent See also:image of Time and Death under the See also:yew See also:tree is worthy of any romantic poet that ever lived, yet it cannot be said that he escaped See also:save at moments from the comfortable 18th-century didactics, or that he was a spiritual writer in the sense that Coleridge, Blake and Shelley were spiritual writers.
Of the true romantic feeling, the ever-See also:present apprehension of the spiritual world and of that struggle of the soul with earthly conditions which we have before spoken of, Rossetti's poetryis as full as his pictures—so full, indeed, that it was misunderstood by certain critics, who found in the most spiritualistic of poets and painters the founder of a " fleshly school." Although it cannot be said that " The Blessed Damozel " or " Sister Helen " or " Rose Mary " reaches to the height of the masterpiecek of Coleridge, the purely romantic temper was with Rossetti a more permanent and even a more natural temper than with any other 19th-century poet, even including the author of " Christabel " himself. As to the other 19th-century poets, though the See also:Ettrick Shepherd in " The See also:Queen's See also:Wake " shows plenty of the true feeling, See also:Hogg's verbosity is too great to allow of really successful work in the See also: Byron's "footlight bogies" and Shelley's metaphysical abstractions had of course but very little to do with the inner core of romance, and we have only to consider Keats, to whose " La Belle Dame sans Merci " and " See also:Eve of St See also:Mark " Rossetti always acknowledged himself to be deeply indebted. In the famous close of the seventh See also:stanza of'the " See also:Ode to a See also:Nightingale "
" Charmed magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn "
there is of course the true thrill of the poetry of wonder, and it is expressed with a music, a startling magic, above the highest reaches of Rossetti's poetry. But, without the See also:evidence of Keats's two See also:late poems, " La Belle Dame sans Merci " and the " Eve of St Mark," who could have said that Keats showed more than a passing apprehension of that which is the basis of the romantic temper—the supernatural ? In contrasting Keats with Rossetti, it must always be remembered that Keats's power over the poetry of wonder came to him at one flash, and that it was not (as we have said elsewhere) " till late in his brief life that his bark was See also:running full See also:sail for the enchanted isle where the old ballad writers once sang and where now sate the wizard Coleridge alone." Though outside Coleridge's work there had been nothing in the poetry of wonder comparable with Keats's " La Belle Dame sans Merci," the latter had previously in "See also:Lamia" entirely failed in rendering the romantic idea of beauty as a maleficent power. The reader, owing to the atmosphere surrounding the dramatic See also:action being entirely classic, does not believe for a moment in the See also:serpent woman. The classic accessories suggested by See also:Burton's brief narrative hampered Keats where to Rossetti (as we see in " Pandora," " See also:Cassandra" and " Troy Town ") they would simply have given See also:birth to romantic ideas. It is perhaps with Coleridge alone that Rossetti can be compared as a worker in the Renascence of Wonder. Although his apparent lack of rhythmic spontaneity places him below the great master as a See also:singer (for in these miracles of Coleridge's genius poetry ceases to appear as a fine art at all —it is the inspired song of the See also:changeling See also:child " singings dancing to itself "), in permanence of the romantic feeling, in vitality of belief in the power of the unseen, Rossetti stands alone. Even the finest portions of his historical ballad " The King's Tragedy " are those which See also:deal with the supernatural.
The events of Rossetti's life may be briefly summarized. In the spring of 186o he married See also: Mrs Rossetti, whose See also:health was delicate, had one still-born child in 1861, and she died from an overdose of See also:laudanum in See also:February 1862. Rossetti then moved from Blackfriars to 16 See also:Cheyne Walk, See also:Chelsea, where for a short time George See also:Meredith, A. C. See also:Swinburne and W. M. Rossetti lived with him. Mrs Rossetti's own water-colour designs show an extraordinary genius for invention and a rare instinct for colour. Rossetti See also:felt her death so acutely that in the first See also:paroxysm of his grief he insisted upon his poems (then in manuscript) being buried in her See also:coffin. But in 1869 the See also:manuscripts were disinterred, and published in 1870. From this time to his death he continued to write poems and produce pictures—in the latter relying more and more upon his manipulative skill but exercising less and less his exhaustless See also:faculty of invention. In 1871 an unsigned See also:article in the Contemporary See also:Review (by Robert See also:Buchanan) on the "Fleshly School of Poetry " made a fierce attack on Rossetti's poems from what was intended to be a moral point of view, to which he answered by one on the " Stealthy School of See also:Criticism." The attack was deeply felt by him, and increased his tendency—previously tempered by natural high See also:spirits—towards gloomy brooding. About 1868 the curse of the artistic and poetic temperament, See also:insomnia, attacked him. One of the most distressing effects of this malady is a See also:nervous shrinking from See also:personal contact with any save a few intimate and constantly seen See also:friends. This See also:peculiar kind of nervousness may be aggravated by the use of See also:narcotics, and in his See also:case was aggravated to a very painful degree; at one time he saw scarcely any one save his own family and immediate family connexions and the present writer. He was frequently away with William Morris at Kelmscot, in See also:Oxfordshire. During the time that his second volume of original poetry, Ballads and Sonnets, was passing through the See also:press (in 1881) his health began to give way, and he left London for See also:Cumberland. A stay of a few See also:weeks in the Vale of St John, however, did nothing to improve his health, and he returned much shattered. He then went to Birchington-on-Sea, but received no benefit from the change, though affectionately tended by friends like Hall See also:Caine and others already mentioned; and, gradually sinking from a complication of disorders, he died on See also:Sunday the 9th of See also:April 1882. In all matters of See also:taste Rossetti's influence has been immense. The purely decorative arts (see ARTS AND CRAFTS) he may be said to have rejuvenated directly or indirectly. And he left the deepest impression upon the poetic methods of his time. One of the most wonderful of Rossetti's endowments, how-ever, was neither of a literary nor an artistic kind: it was that of a rare and most winning See also:personality which attracted towards itself, as if by an unconscious See also:magnetism, the love of all his friends, the love, indeed, of all who knew him. (T. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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