To complain, as some have done, of the mediaeval quality of his subjects is foolish. As well complain that fairy tales are old. Rossetti was mediaeval in his thoughts and tastes. Without any affectation or straining for effect he lived his intellectual life in a mystical, richly-coloured world of romantic knights and ladies. These, and not the hedgerows or buttercups of to-day, were what came to the surface in his creative moods. We have witnessed in these latter years a great revival of romance, springing up in various ways all over the continent of Europe. Of this revival in England, on the side of pictorial art, Rossetti was the fountain head. The gentle melancholy that pervades his work was derived from his namesake Dante, to whom he was doubly allied by ties of birth and sentiment. "He was moreover driven by something like the same unrelaxing stress and fervour of temperament, so that even in middle age it seemed scarcely less true to say of Rossetti than of Dante himself:
'Like flame within the naked hand,
His body bore his burning heart.'"
The direction of his influence, and of the Pre-Raphaelite movement generally, has been worked out in a scholarly manner by Mr. Percy Bate, in a book called "The English Pre-Raphaelite Painters," where an attempt is made for the first time to trace the artistic lineage of such diverse executants as Mr. Spencer Stanhope, Mr. Walter Crane, Mr. Strudwick, Mrs. de Morgan, Mr. Byam Shaw, and others. On many of these the influence of Burne-Jones is more evident than that of Rossetti; but Burne-Jones himself owed much to Rossetti at the critical period of his career.
The subject of Rossetti's art is one that presents difficulty, on account of the semi-privacy which surrounded it during the painter's lifetime. The subject of Rossetti himself is more difficult still. It has become a sort of fashion to decry the man, and to forget the genius, among some who knew him only in his latest years—perhaps by hearsay mainly. Stories of his want of consideration for others, his egotism, his shabby treatment of patrons, his ungoverned temper, are reeled off with a sort of zest, as though they summed up the man. But in Rossetti good and bad were, as usual, inextricably mixed up, with a strong preponderance towards the former. There were periods when his brilliant, impulsive, magnetic personality swamped the most audacious faults. For a man to stand out above his fellows is often enough a signal for petty jealousy and stone-throwing. But in such cases, one may remark, it is not always a David who prepares the sling, nor is it always the giant who is on the side of the Philistines.
OUR ILLUSTRATIONS
Rossetti's record as a painter divides itself naturally into three periods, beginning with a fairly numerous series of small romantic water-colours, which to many people represent the most charming, if not the most mature, feature of his work. The subjects for these were selected largely from Browning, from the "Vita Nuova" of Dante, and from the Arthurian legends, themes which appealed irresistibly to his imaginative mind, and which formed a common link between the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the later group of young Oxford men which included William Morris and Burne-Jones. Practically the only oil pictures painted by Rossetti during this period were the Girlhood of Mary Virgin, and the little Ecce Ancilla Domini, now in the Tate Gallery at Millbank. This period came to an end in 1862, with the death of Rossetti's wife, and the beautiful Beata Beatrix (also in the Tate Gallery) which was really a memorial of her pure features, was followed by a number of magnificent canvases painted from models of a rich and sumptuous type, amongst which may be specially mentioned The Beloved, Monna Vanna, and Sibylla Palmifera, Lady Lilith, the Venus Verticordia, The Loving Cup, Veronica Veronese, The Bower Meadow, La Ghirlandata, Sea Spell, and La Bella Mano. Lastly comes a large group of single figure subjects painted from, or based on, the dark and almost exotic features of Mrs. William Morris. Of these may be named in particular Mariana, Pandora, Proserpine, Astarte Syriaca, La Donna della Finestra, The Day Dream, and Rossetti's last finished picture La Pia.
Owing to an invincible dislike for exhibitions, and the secrecy which in consequence hung over Rossetti's work, the two earlier groups were hardly seen by the public at all until after his death, and his fame, when it spread, was based chiefly upon the large canvases of the latest group, which may account for the very general belief that Rossetti painted only from one type of sitter, with somewhat exaggerated characteristics, a further error which may be explained by the mannerisms which undoubtedly beset him towards the close of his life, when his health had failed permanently and his eyesight was no longer at its best.
Of the earliest pictures, painted for the most part when Rossetti was little more than a boy, the following are selected for illustration:
(1) Ecce Ancilla Domini, which was exhibited in 1850 and helped to bear the brunt of the vigorous onslaught which was made in that year upon the pictures of the newly formed Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. There is nothing which could possibly shock us now in the simple, girl-like figure of Rossetti's Virgin, crouching in half-awakened awe upon her pallet couch before the grave-faced angel who is holding out to her a lily. In many ways it is a far more reverent treatment of the scene than one is accustomed to in old Italian canvases with their sumptuously robed madonnas and angels gay with peacock-wings and jewelled trappings. The painting, too, is a masterpiece for so young and inexperienced an artist, full of skill in the handling of white draperies and restrained in the use of colour. The only bright notes in the picture are the crimson cloth worked with a lily, upon a stand at the foot of the bed, and the blue curtain at its head. Everything else is subdued and faint with the clear light of an English, not an Eastern, dawn, seen through the open window which frames the golden head of the angel.