The Passover drawing, just referred to, is a small, unfinished water-colour, in which once more Rossetti has treated the domestic life of the Holy Family with a reverent freedom from conventionality, such as Millais used in The Carpenter's Shop and Holman Hunt in the Finding of Christ in the Temple. The Passover was one of Rossetti's very earliest designs, having been sketched out first as far back as 1849; it was the one selected for a memorial window to Rossetti in the church at Birchington-on-Sea, where he was buried.
Other drawings which are dated, or were finished by 1855, though they may have been in hand considerably earlier, are The Nativity, La Belle Dame sans Mercy, and the Annunciation, all water-colours. In the last-named the Virgin (done from Miss Siddal) is represented washing clothes in a stream, whilst the angel Gabriel stands by with folded wings, between two trees: both are in white, and the picture shows a strong effect of sunlight.
In addition to the foregoing there must be chronicled under 1855 the first of the important and beautiful designs for woodcuts, which in the absence of his pictures were almost the only means afforded to the public for many years of judging of Rossetti's work. This is a drawing for a poem in William Allingham's "Day and Night Songs," called The Maids of Elfen-Mere. Allingham was employed in the Customs in Ireland, and at the period in question, and for some years after, Rossetti and he were very intimate, corresponding freely and vivaciously on all topics concerning their circle.
In 1856 were completed the water-colours of Dante's Dream and Fra Pace. Mr. William Morris, who acquired several early water-colours by Rossetti, was apparently the first purchaser of Fra Pace. The picture represents a kneeling monk busy illuminating at a desk. He has worked so long that the cat has coiled itself up asleep upon his trailing robe. A youthful acolyte is tickling it with a straw in order to beguile the tedium of the long silence. The drawing is somewhat archaic in character and stiff in design, but it is eminently characteristic of Rossetti, full of quaint conceits and humour, from the row of little bottles that hold the good man's pigments to the dead mouse he is copying and the split pomegranate that lies uneaten by his side.
The Dante's Dream above mentioned is the first, and in certain points most beautiful, version of the subject which afterwards served for Rossetti's largest picture, the one in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool. The water-colour is somewhat squarer in shape, but the composition and pose of the five figures are very much the same as in the large Liverpool picture.
In March, 1856, Rossetti secured an important commission—judged by the standard of his current work and prices—to paint a reredos in three compartments for the cathedral of Llandaff, which John P. Seddon was engaged in restoring. The subject he chose for this undertaking was The Seed of David, showing in the centre-piece the infant Christ on his mother's knee being adored by a shepherd and a king, and on either side a single figure of David, first as a shepherd-boy slinging the stone for Goliath, and secondly as a king harping to the glory of God. The triptych was not completely finished until 1864, and after that was considerably retouched in 1869, when Rossetti went down to Llandaff for the purpose.
The year 1856 (or, if we take the date of publication, 1857) deserves commemoration as the year of the famous Moxon "Tennyson," for which Rossetti designed no fewer than five illustrations.
Separate pen-and-ink drawings exist for most, if not for all, of these Tennyson designs, and water-colours were afterwards painted from three of them.
In point of number and interest the productions of 1857 are remarkable. It was the year of the Oxford frescoes, for one thing, though these dragged on till 1859; and it was the year of a charming little series of water-colours, which were acquired one after the other by Rossetti's newly-made acquaintance, William Morris, who, some time later, being in want of capital for his own business, sold them in a batch to their late possessor, Mr. George Rae. These comprise:
(1) The Damsel of the Sanc Grael, robed in green, holding a long-stemmed cup in her hand.