The Paper's reporter Huang Song compiled
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) may not have been the most talented member of the "pre-Raphaelites", but he was perhaps the most romantic of them. Recently, in the exhibition "Portrait of Rossetti" held at the Holburne Museum in Bath, England, models can be seen posing as literary figures similar to their own lives. This entanglement of art and life, figures and models, subject painting and portraiture highlights the multiple meanings behind Rossetti's works, and also allows the public to see his influence outside the scope of painting art.
Rossetti photographed by Lewis Carroll
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who at the age of 20 sought to change the atmosphere of British art at the time, has never really shaken off the obsession of his youth, one of the three founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a school of painting initiated by painters, sculptors and critics, determined to reform art and oppose the stereotypes of theatrical school.
The young painters of the time, Holman Hunt (1827-1910), John Millais (1829–1896), and Rossetti, believed that the works of the early Renaissance were sincere and simple and vivid, which was the artistic style they aspired to. So they believed that real art existed before Raphael, tried to carry forward Raphael's previous art to save English painting, and believed that they could do it. In 1848, when the "Pre-Raphaelites" were launched, Millais was not yet 20 years old.
They signed works with "PRBs" instead of personal attributes, and seriously proposed an almost pompous creed: a commitment to "expressing true ideas"; studying nature "attentively"; sympathizing with "direct, serious and heartfelt" creations in previous art; and producing "excellent pictures and sculptures".
The birth of the Pre-Raphaelites
In 1849, pre-Raphaelite works were exhibited for the first time. Millais and Hunter's work was showcased at the Royal Academy, while Rossetti's Girlhood of Mary Virgin was freely exhibited on a street corner in London's Hyde Park. Signatures are "PRB". However, in the second exhibition in 1850, Millais's Christ in the House of Parents, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, caused a great sensation. Dickens famously wrote a notable article in which he attacked the image of Mary in the painting as "looking like a cabaret in a despicable French restaurant, or a waitress in an inferior English bar", and accusing Millais of "willingly excluding from your own mind all reason, all devout desires, all lofty ideals, all the comprehensive concepts of benevolence, seriousness, nobility, sacredness, elegance or beauty, and replacing them with feelings of disgust, exclusion and resistance at best"! As you can imagine, "PRB" became famous overnight.
Millais, "Jesus at My Parents' House" (non-exhibit)
Although Rossetti was the most influential member of the group, he was neither his best painter (the best was Millais, followed by Holman Hunt), nor the most faithful to his ideals, he did not study nature, which accounted for only a small part of his paintings, nor did he always paint perfect works.
Rossetti, Mary's Girlhood, 1848-1849. This was Rosset's first Pre-Raphaelite painting.
His brilliance is poetry. Rossetti is the most artistic in the group, because he is both a painter and a poet, and he has two ways of expressing sensibility. Whether it is PRB's signed painting Mary's Maidenhood (1849) or his most important psalm, The Blessed Damozel (1871), poetry and painting usually correspond to his work.
As a teenager, Rossetti was enveloped in Dante, Christian, and Victorian styles, named after the poems of Alfredlord Tennyson (1809–1892), known as "A Dream of Fair Women," which appeared in the image as bright-eyed beauties looking thoughtfully into the distance. Rossetti's artistic pursuits were encouraged at home, with his father Gabriele Rossetti, a Dante scholar and his mother Francis, an Italian of British descent—and her brother John Polidori was both Byron's physician and author of the first modern vampire story, The Vampire of 1819. Thus, Romanticism remained dormant in the depths of Rossetti's soul, waiting for him to find his own expression.
Initially, he set out to master traditional forms of painting. He was promoted from the Preparatory Course of the Royal College to the Royal Academy. However, the teaching there was not suitable for a moody young man who did not like to be told what to do, and he quickly dropped out. Instead, he became an apprentice to Ford Madox Brown, a painter who excelled at very detailed and eccentric pictures, where Rossetti met Holman Hunt, another young painter who hated academic teaching.
After seeing Holman Hunt's depiction of the Night of St. Agnes (1848) based on medieval scenes from the poems of the then unknown poet Keats, Rossetti recognized the commonalities—dreamy, sensual, lush—and became friends with the painter, who was a year older than himself, and then they moved together and worked together like monks. When Rossetti introduced his friend to Millais, the PRB took shape.
Although the "pre-Raphaelites" as a group itself did not last for several years, they influenced later aestheticism, Symbolism, Vienna Secession, Art Nouveau, and arts and crafts. And each member took his own unique path: Holman Hunt painted a large number of paintings of biblical and contemporary genres; Millais became a successful portrait painter and social darling, as evidenced by Ophelia, which is currently on display at the Pudong Art Museum in Shanghai; Rossetti created traditional portraits and countless beautiful women with mythical and mysterious overtones.
John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851-1852 (Pudong Art Museum)
The multiple meanings behind Rossetti's work
Rossetti has painted portraits of at least 90 different people, including his family, members of the pre-Raphaelites, patrons, models, friends in the art world, most notably works that depict female beauty. Rossetti has mixed feelings for the female models he is, often with seductive lips, sweet hair and rejecting expressions that seem to represent his ideal femininity. In these works he saw the beauty and firmness of Keats' Belle Dame Sans Merci and depicted them in rich and deep colors by the Venetian Renaissance painters Titian and Veronese.
His three women, Elizabeth Sidal, Fanny Conforce and Jane Morris, almost dominated his art and life. Rossetti's first muse was Elizabeth Siddall, the daughter of a gardener and a poet, who began modeling rossetti in 1849 and created a series of works featuring her. But she was immortalized in the cold tub in which Millais composed Ophelia (1852).
Sidal, painted by Rossetti, pen painting, 1854
Rossetti's most poignant work for her, Beata Beatrix, was created in 1863, a year after Sidal's death. Rossetti married Sidal in 1860, but Sidal's birth to a lower family made Rossetti hesitate. In 1862, Sidal died of excessive opiate tincture after giving birth to a dead baby. Rossetti imagined Sidal as Dante's beloved Beatta Beatrix and painted many works.
Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, 1863, modeled by Sidal, epitomizes Rossetti's passion for beautiful women.
In fact, by the time Sidal died, Rossetti had already begun a relationship with Fanny Cornforth, the blacksmith's daughter, and she moved into Rossetti's house as a titular housekeeper. His younger brother William Michael, who was also a painter, acknowledged Conforce's beauty, could not fully understand why the relationship lasted until the painter's death, as she "lacked the charisma of upbringing, education, or intellect."
The blonde-haired Andrreath appears in works such as Bocca Baciata (1859) and Lady Lilith (1867). Later, when both of them were middle-aged, he began calling her "My dear elephant" and was sending her elephant cartoons. And he is her "rhinoceros".
However, even with Conforce, Rossetti did not forget to pursue his friend, William Morris, who would later be known as the father of modern design, his wife Jane Morris, who had curly black hair and pursed lips and was the ideal beauty in "Pre-Raphaelite" paintings, and although Jane Morris had been a model for Rossetti from an early age, their relationship began in the mid-1860s, when Jane was already a mother of two children.
Rossetti, The Blue Silk Dress (Jane Morris), 1868, depicts the wife of William Morris, who was ideal for Raphaelite's pre-paige beauties, with whom Rossetti had an inevitable affair
Rossetti's portrait of them records an irreparable moment in the individual life of the subject. At the same time, each painting shows us how the artist sees the people around him.
Although Rossetti had a rare passion for women's painting, his work was very limited, and there was a gap between Rossetti's momentum and craftsmanship compared to the British painters of the same period, Lord Leighton or Millais, who could not only paint portraits, but also create classical and historical scenes. Still trapped in his own closed world, he prefers to paint small scenes and watercolors, a gap that was revealed as early as Ecce Ancilla Domini in 1850.
Rossetti, The Blessed Maiden, 1875-1878
Rossetti was a poet and an artist. His poem The Blessed Maiden was first written in 1847, when he was 19 years old, and he continued to revise it until his death.
William Graham was one of the artist's most loyal patrons, commissioning a painting of his subject in 1871. The poem uses ancient language to describe Da Mozelle visiting her earth lover from heaven. Graham was an avid collector of early Renaissance paintings, so the work took the form of a Renaissance altarpiece.
But Rossetti is sensitive to criticism. In 1871, a critic named Robert Buchanan slammed his first collection of poems, causing Rossetti to hallucinate and have a nervous breakdown. He mixed chloral hydrate with whiskey to combat headaches and insomnia, which exacerbated the symptoms. His increasing dependence on drugs only increased his paranoia, and he was taken to Scotland to recuperate, but like Sidal, he also tried to commit suicide there.
Later he recovered, but it was the beginning of a decline in his life. In 1874, Morris removed Rossetti from the art deco company he had founded, and Rossetti became a morbid hermit at his Chelsea home. He remained dependent on drugs until 1882, when he died of kidney failure in Kent, and his decline ended.
Rossetti's influence far exceeded his mere works of painting and poetry. While the public may relish the personal emotional story behind his female paintings, the fact that his romantic depiction of women – long hair and affection – has had a lasting impact on Victorian aesthetic notions. Even though he was not a first-rate poet, his poems and paintings came together, showing a world of his own creation.
Nor is his ending as sad as it seems. Shortly before his death, Rossetti muttered to herself: "The world is beautiful, and life itself is beautiful." I'm glad I'm alive. ”
Note: The exhibition will run until January 9, 2022, this article is compiled from the museum's website and Country Life
Editor-in-Charge: Weihua Gu
Proofreader: Ding Xiao