The rules laid down as to method in painting,—such as, that every subject and accessory should be studied direct from nature, and from one model—do not seem to have been stringently enforced: indeed in one of Rossetti’s most rigidly Pre-Raphaelite pictures, “Ecce Ancilla Domini,” the face of the Virgin was avowedly painted from several models, while in that of the Angel the artist has produced a curious blending of his brother’s features with those of another sitter.
It is improbable that an aversion to the one-model rule, which has been attributed to Ford Madox Brown as a reason for holding aloof from the Brotherhood, had very much to do with his decision to remain independent of it. Mr. Madox Brown was from the first in cordial sympathy with the movement, and on terms of intimate friendship with its leaders, but he foresaw the dangers of an artistic clique, and, perhaps, the impossibility of permanent consonance of method between temperaments so diverse as those of the seven members enlisted. Nor was his own strong and individualistic style of painting quite in harmony with the manner of his younger friends. He was pre-eminently an historical painter; and the critical and romantic treatment of history, though bordering very closely on Pre-Raphaelite ground, hardly came within the immediate scope of the Brotherhood. Though frequently acknowledged by his later critics as the father—or sometimes the grandfather—of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, Mr. Madox Brown consistently disclaimed any such title, and did so with no less justice than modesty. At the same time, his work was so intimately connected with that of the men whom he powerfully influenced and inspired that it may fairly be studied side by side with theirs in illustration of the dominant principles common to all.
In the autumn of 1848 it was agreed that the three chief painters should select their next subjects from Keats’s “Isabella.” Millais, at that time under the influence of Hunt rather than of Rossetti (who indeed was still far from adopting any definite line of technique), decided upon a scene depicting Lorenzo at supper with Isabella and her brothers. The pensive and earnest face of Lorenzo was painted from W.M. Rossetti. Mrs. Hodgkinson, the wife of Millais’s half-brother, sat for Isabella. It would not be easy to disprove Holman Hunt’s generous but weighty verdict on the finished picture, as “the most wonderful painting that any youth still under twenty years of age ever did in the world.”
Hunt and Rossetti, however, were not so steadfast in their adhesion to the agreement as to the choice of subjects from Keats. Hunt indeed planned, and probably commenced about this time, his afterwards notable picture, “Isabella and the Pot of Basil;” but this, though taking rank among the best examples of his earlier style, was not finally painted until 1867. He decided to finish, for the next Academy, a picture already in hand, “Rienzi swearing revenge over the body of his brother.” In this design the figure of Colonna, who endeavours to pacify the would-be avenger, was painted from W.M. Rossetti, while Dante Rossetti sat for the head of Rienzi,—and neglected, in spite of much urging from his comrades, to fulfil his own share in the “Isabella” project; but pursued work upon the most original and remarkable of his early pictures, “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin.” Prior to this, he had proposed, and partly sketched, a design entitled, “Retro me, Sathana,” representing a young girl walking, and earnestly reading, in a cloister, in the company of a venerable priest, while the retreating figure of Satan threatens her from the shade. This conception was never carried out; but it is probable that the now familiar sonnet bearing the same title was written about this time. The only painting of any note hitherto accomplished by Rossetti was a life-size and nearly half-length portrait of his father, finished in this same year 1848, and commissioned and bought by his godfather, Mr. Charles Lyell, of Kinnordy, Forfar, the father of the eminent geologist. This was the only male portrait Rossetti ever did in oils. In his new picture, “The Girlhood of Mary Virgin,” (called at first “The Education of the Virgin”) the face of the lovely child-angel was painted from a young half-sister of Woolner (though greatly modified, if not wholly re-painted, afterwards); while St. Joiachim was taken from an old family servant, and Saint Anna and St. Mary from Mrs. Rossetti and Miss Christina Rossetti respectively.
In the spring of 1849 the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood held their first “private view” with three important pictures, Rossetti’s “Girlhood,” Hunt’s “Rienzi,” and Millais’s “Lorenzo and Isabella,” duly signed and monogramed with the initials P.R.B. after the painters’ names, ready for exhibition; the first appearing at the Free Gallery (formerly known as the Chinese Gallery), Hyde Park Corner, then under the management of the Association for Promoting the Free Exhibition of Modern Art, the other two at the Royal Academy, where they were favourably hung. Rossetti’s picture was sold to the Marchioness of Bath on “private view” day for £80, and Hunt’s “Rienzi” found a purchaser soon afterwards. “Lorenzo and Isabella,” sold for £100 in 1849, was bought in 1883 by the Corporation of Liverpool for £1,120.
A tour on the Continent with Holman Hunt in September, 1849, gave Rossetti fresh inspiration from the early Italian masters and the best representatives of the Dutch school. The impressions made upon him in his twenty-first year by travel in France and Belgium are recorded for us in the wonderfully vivid and sharply-cut vignette-poems of this period. Eager as ever for emotional experience, and with the divine passion of hero-worship strong upon him, his holiday among the great painters was a delightsome pilgrimage, full of suggestion and stimulus for future work. In Paris, the sight of Giorgione’s great idyll in the Louvre, “A Venetian Pastoral,” drew from the young tourist a sonnet unsurpassed for sheer verbal colour and atmosphere by any of his later poems. Here, too, were written the great memorial sonnets, “Place de la Bastille,” and “The Staircase of Notre Dame.” On the cliffs at Boulogne Rossetti wrote “Sea-Limits.” He
—“climbed the stair in Antwerp church,
What time the circling thews of sound
At sunset seem to heave it round.
Far up, the carillon did search