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Was “Arts and Crafts” merely a movement of artists and thinkers reclaiming humanity and moral values by redefining standards and appreciation of art, or was there also a goal to show the intellectual force behind artistic expression, the one that goes beyond philosophical thinking just by appealing to our very nature?
Personally, I find the answer in the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who was according to both John Ruskin and Walter Pater (McGann, J.J, 2008) the most important and original force in the second half of the nineteenth century in Great Britain. Even though he was quite gifted in many areas: painting, writing, designing and translating, I will try to focus here on the most important parts of his life and career, the ones that perhaps influenced modern practitioners, but most of all his works that I’m especially fond of. I will especially reflect on his style, more controversial than unusual for that time, due, of course, his expressive freedom.It is safe to say that the major turning point of Rossetti’s career started the very year he dropped out from the art academy (1848). It is the year when he met William Holman Hunt at the exhibition and was truly fascinated by his paintings (McGann,2008), so they immediately became friends and moved in together. Along with Hunt, he gathered a group of likeminded artists and writers and named it Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (McGann,2008). He was very much impressed with John Ruskin’s ideas and philosophy on art that he tried to translate as much as possible to his co-workers ( his brother William Michael, sculptor Thomas Woolmer, painter James Collins and F.G. Stephens ).The first exhibition of their work went fairly well, so they started working on, what will later become famous periodical, The Germ. This time the exhibition was swarmed with negative criticism, but it also drew Ruskin’s attention and he came to Rossetti’s defence. It was a start of a new, but not long-lasting friendship, as Rossetti was never much fond of any kind of tutorship.
Fig.1
Rossetti, D. G. (1849) The Girlhood of Mary Virgin [Oil on canvas]. Tate Gallery, London.
During the same year (1848-49), he produced his first great painting The Girlhood of Mary Virgin accompanied by sonnets, which by J.J. McGann (2008) can be interpreted as confrontation to Victorian society with disturbing and different way of thinking and feeling. This can also be taken as the first great example of his artistic style, called “double work of art”, where he used to “translate” poems or texts into paintings and vice versa. The paintings didn’t always have to be his own, but perhaps something he saw in a museum exhibition that caught his eye. His favourite topics were love and passion, and in a way, it is the very soul of his most famous art pieces.Rossetti, D. G. (1849) The Girlhood of Mary Virgin [Oil on canvas]. Tate Gallery, London.
His style carries the signature of his favourite English and Italian poets and writers, most of all Dante Alighieri. His fascination with Dante and his Vita Nueva can be seen in one of his earliest and most famous sonnets The Blessed Damozel, often referred to as his signature work (McGann,2008).This is also a “double work”, though the painting was something he struggled with for the large part of his life. Between several versions, the most displayed one is the one he made for his patron William Graham , between the year 1875and 1878 ( he wrote the sonnet when he was only eighteen).
Fig.2
Rossetti, D. G. (1875-8) The Blessed Damozel (with predella) [Oil]. Fogg Art Museum, Harward University Museums, Cambridge.
Rossetti, D. G. (1875-8) The Blessed Damozel (with predella) [Oil]. Fogg Art Museum, Harward University Museums, Cambridge.
Included text (on the frame):
Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
Herseemed she scarce had been a day
(To one, it is ten years of years.
Leaving aside the play with its iconographic sense ( erotic version of Virgin Mary), I have to say I’m most impressed with the way he translated his words into painting, everything from his vision of the damozel, through lovers and his desires. While he speaks shyly in the poem of this last part, in the painting, he clearly separates the lover and his fantasy, and it truly does make quite an impact.
But to be completely honest, I’m more fond of some of his later works, especially portraits of women he was involved, or better to say, impassioned with. His main sources of inspiration were his wife Elisabeth Siddal, who he met in 1850’s, and his secret passion Fanny Cornforth and Jane Burden, who later married his friend William Morris (McGann,2008). Elisabeth’s death in 1862 due laudanum overdose set him of the track for a little while. He was working on a sequel to The Germ with W. Morris, the magazine called “The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine”. He also worked on the important volume of poetical translations “The Early Italian Poets” with additional volume of original poetry “Dante at Verona and other Poems”, but he never issued it. Instead, he buried it in the coffin with his wife ( it was recovered, but much later).
During 1860’ he mostly worked on erotic female portraits, using Fanny and Jane Morris as main models. His life started to weave with sadness, he closed himself in, distanced from friends and family and started taking spirits and drugs, eventually getting addicted to chloral (McGann,2008). But it is also the time when he made some of his most significant, and in my opinion, most beautiful work. In 1866 and ’67 he wrote sonnets for the paintings Sibylla Palmifera, also called “Soul’s Beauty”, and Lady Lilith (“ Body’s Beauty”). In 1868 he added another sonnet for a picture, called Venus Verticordia. So these are all again “double works of art”.
Fig.3
Rossetti, D. G. (1868) Lady Lilith [Oil on canvas]. Delawere Art Museum, Wilmington.
Rossetti, D. G. (1868) Lady Lilith [Oil on canvas]. Delawere Art Museum, Wilmington.
Fig.4
Rossetti, D. G. (1866-70) Sibylla Palmifera [Oil on canvas] Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
Rossetti, D. G. (1866-70) Sibylla Palmifera [Oil on canvas] Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
Fig.5
Rossetti, D. G. (1864-8) Venus Verticordia [Oil on canvas] Russel-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth.
Rossetti, D. G. (1864-8) Venus Verticordia [Oil on canvas] Russel-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth.
There is just something alluring, yet graceful about them…indeed breathtaking. A true representation of what his art is about, love and passion.
Obviously, his desire for writing poetry was back and so, alongside these, he compiled some of his previous writings and issued a volume in 1870 called Poems. Even though the book was successful among readers, there always has to be a critic who will try to undermine his work, such as Robert Buchanan. In his essay The Flashy School of Poetry- Mr. D. G. Rossetti he stated that:
“Judged relatively to his poetic associates, Mr. Rossetti must be pronounced inferior to either. He cannot tell a pleasant story like Mr. Morris, not forge alliterative thunderbolts like Mr. Swinburne. It must be conceded, nevertheless, that he is neither so glibly imitative as one, nor so transcendently superficial as another.”(Buchanan, 1871, p.337)
Further, while commenting on his poem Nuptial Sleep, Buchanan states:
“It must be supposed that all Mr. Rossetti’s poems are made up of trash like this. Some of them are as noteworthy for delicacy of touch as others are for shamelessness of exposition.”(Buchanan, 1871,p.338)
The strange part is that, while I didn’t find anything shameless and profane in Rossetti’s work, I was absolutely stunned by Buchanan’s elaborate critique, with so many insults over about 20 pages that it seemed like he needed special dictionary.
Perhaps the best critique of Rossetti’s work, aside from those of his fellow artists and writers, came in form of an essay by Walter Pater- Appreciations, with an Essay on Style. Unfortunately, it didn’t come out until Rossetti died, and by that time, even Buchanan backed up his words. In this essay Peter explains that “what is of primary significance, was the quality and sincerity, already felt as one of the charms of that earliest poem (The Blessed Damozel)-a perfect sincerity, taking effect in the deliberate use of the most direct and unconventional expression, for the conveyance of a poetic sense which recognised no conventional standards of what poetry was called upon to be” (Pater, 1889).
He says that Rossetti’s meaning “was always personal and even recondite, in a certain sense learned and casualistical, sometimes complex or obscure; but the term was always, one could see, deliberately chosen from many competitors, as the just transcript of that peculiar phase of soul which he alone knew, precisely as he knew it” (Pater, 1889).
In my own observation, every movement in arts history started with artists who were ahead of their time, or who weren’t afraid to express what their heart imagined. Whether I like Rossetti’s works or not, I can’t but feel outmost respect for his dedication and determination to express his passions without the fear of criticism, for being able to rise up when he was down and approach matters from a different angle; a pitfall that many artists find themselves in and are unable to overcome it. What’s most important of his legacy is the fact that he opened doors for new artist and creative freedom, showed that art, whether in literary or pictorial form, is the most powerful method of communication and its message is always delivered, with positive or negative response, but never ignored.
References:
McGann, J. J. (2008) The complete writings and pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti . Available at: http://www.rossettiarchive.org (Accessed: 28 April 2010.
McGann, J. J. (2008) An Introduction to D. G. Rossetti. Available at: http://www.rossettiarchive.org/racs/bio-exhibit/index.html (Accessed: 28 April 2010.
Buchanan, R. (1871) The Flashy School of Poetry: Mr D. G. Rossetti . Virtue and Co.: Strahan& Co., volume 18, p.337-338
Pater, W. (1889) Appreciations, with an Essay on Style. R.R. Clark, Edinburgh: MacMillan and Co, p. 228-243.
Image list:
Rossetti, D. G. (1849) The Girlhood of Mary Virgin [Oil on canvas]. Tate Gallery, London. Fig.1
Rossetti, D. G. (1875-8) The Blessed Damozel (with predella) [Oil]. Fogg Art Museum, Harward University Museums, Cambridge. Fig.2
Rossetti, D. G. (1868) Lady Lilith [Oil on canvas]. Delawere Art Museum, Wilmington. Fig.3
Rossetti, D. G. (1866-70) Sibylla Palmifera [Oil on canvas] Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight. Fig.4
Rossetti, D. G. (1864-8) Venus Verticordia [Oil on canvas] Russel-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth. Fig.5
Rossetti, D. G. (1955) Paolo and Francesca da Rimini [Online]. Available at: http://nibiryukov.narod.ru/nb_pinacoteca/nb_pinacoteca_painting/nb_pinacoteca_rossetti_paolo_and_francesca_da_rimini.jpg (Accessed: 28 April 2010). for cover tab