That this was a matter of great and peculiar vexation to him may be supposed when it is remembered that unequalled as had been his good fortune in finding fine face-models (ladies of position and culture, and often of extraordinary beauty), he had in the matter of figure-models been most unlucky. And this, added to his slight knowledge of anatomy, made all his nude pictures undesirable save those few painted from the beautiful girl who stood for ‘The Spirit of the Rainbow’ and ‘Forced Music.’ What his work from the nude suffered from this is incalculable, as may be seen in the crayon called ‘Ligeia Siren,’ a naked siren playing on a kind of lute, which Rossetti described as “certainly one of his best things.” The beauty and value of a crayon which for weird poetry—especially in the eyes—must be among Rossetti’s masterpieces are ruined by the drawing of the breasts.
The most interesting feature of the book, however, is not that which deals with the prices Rossetti got for his pictures, but that which tells the reader the place where and the conditions under which they were painted; and no portion of the book is more interesting than that which relates to the work done at Kelmscott:—
“At the beginning of this year 1874 Rossetti was again occupied with the picture which he had commenced in the preceding spring, entitled, ‘The Bower Maiden’—a girl in a room with a pot of marigolds and a black cat. It was painted from ‘little Annie’ (a cottage-girl and house assistant at Kelmscott), and it ‘goes on’ (to quote the words of one of his letters) ‘like a house on fire. This is the only kind of picture one ought to do—just copying the materials, and no more: all others are too much trouble.’ It is not difficult to understand that the painter of a ‘Proserpine’ and a ‘Ghirlandata’ would occasionally feel the luxury of a mood intellectually lazy, and would be minded to give voice to it—as in this instance—in terms wilfully extreme; keeping his mental eye none the less steadily directed to a ‘Roman Widow’ or a ‘Blessed Damozel’ in the near future. As a matter of fact, my brother painted very few things, at any stage of his career, as mere representations of reality, unimbued by some inventive or ideal meaning: in the rare instances when he did so, he naturally felt an indolent comfort, and made no scruple of putting the feeling into words—highly suitable for being taken cum grano salis. Nothing was more alien from his nature or habit than ‘tall talk’ of any kind about his aims, aspirations, or performances. It was into his work—not into his utterances about his work—that he infused the higher and deeper elements of his spirit. ‘The Bower Maiden’ was finished early in February, and sold to Mr. Graham for 682l., after it had been offered to Mr. Leyland at a rather higher figure, and declined. It has also passed under the names of ‘Fleurs de Marie,’ ‘Marigolds,’ and ‘The Gardener’s Daughter.’ After ‘The Bower Maiden’ had been disposed of, other work was taken up—more especially ‘The Roman Widow,’ bearing the alternative title of ‘Dîs Manibus,’ which was in an advanced stage by the month of May, and was completed in June or July. It was finished with little or no glazing. The Roman widow is a lady still youthful, in a grey fawn-tinted drapery, with a musical instrument in each hand; she is in the sepulchral chamber of her husband, whose stone urn appears in the background. I possess the antique urn which my brother procured, and which he used for the painting. For graceful simplicity, and for depth of earnest but not strained sentiment, he never, I think, exceeded ‘The Roman Widow.’ The two instruments seem to repeat the two mottoes on the urn, ‘Ave Domine—Vale Domine.’ The head was painted from Miss Wilding, already mentioned; but it seems to me partly associated with the type of Mrs. Stillman’s face as well. There are many roses in this picture—both wild and garden roses; they kept the artist waiting a little after the work was otherwise finished. ‘I really think it looks well,’ he wrote on one occasion; ‘its fair luminous colour seems to melt into the gold frame (which has only just come) like a part of it.’ He feared that the picture might be ‘too severe and tragic’ for some tastes; but could add (not, perhaps, with undue confidence), ‘I don’t think Géricault or Régnault would have quite scorned it.’”
The magnificent design here alluded to, ‘Dîs Manibus,’ entirely suggested by the urn, which had somewhat come into his possession (probably
through Howell), and also ‘The Bower Maiden,’ suggested by his accidentally seeing a pretty cottage-child lifting some marigolds to a shelf, formed part of the superb work produced by Rossetti during his long retirement at Kelmscott Manor—that period never before recorded, which has at this very moment been brought into prominence by his friend Dr. Hake’s sonnet-sequence ‘The New Day,’ just published. As far as literary and artistic work goes, it was, perhaps, the richest period of his life; and that it was also one of the happiest is clear not only from his own words, but also from the following testimony of Dr. Hake, who saw much of him there:—
O, happy days with him who once so loved us!
We loved as brothers, with a single heart,
The man whose iris-woven pictures moved us
From nature to her blazoned shadow—Art.
How often did we trace the nestling Thames
From humblest waters on his course of might,
Down where the weir the bursting current stems—
There sat till evening grew to balmy night,
Veiling the weir whose roar recalled the Strand
Where we had listened to the wave-lipped sea,
That seemed to utter plaudits while we planned
Triumphal labours of the day to be.
It was at Kelmscott, in the famous tapestried room, that besides painting the ‘Proserpine,’ ‘The Roman Widow,’ &c., he wrote many of his later poems, including ‘Rose Mary.’
Considering how deep is Mr. W. M. Rossetti’s affection for his brother’s memory, and how great is his admiration for his brother’s work,
it is remarkable how judicial is his mind when writing about him. This is what he says about the much discussed ‘Venus Astarte’:—
“Into the ‘Venus Astarte’ he had put his utmost intensity of thinking, feeling, and method—he had aimed to make it equally strong in abstract sentiment and in physical grandeur—an ideal of the mystery of beauty, offering a sort of combined quintessence of what he had endeavoured in earlier years to embody in the two several types of ‘Sibylla Palmifera’ and ‘Lilith,’ or (as he ultimately named them in the respective sonnets) ‘Soul’s Beauty’ and ‘Body’s Beauty.’ It may be well to remark that, by the time when he completed the ‘Venus Astarte,’ or ‘Astarte Syriaca,’ he had got into a more austere feeling than of old with regard to colour and chiaroscuro; and the charm of the picture has, I am aware, been less, to many critics and spectators of the work, than he would have deemed to be its due, as compared with some of his other performances of more obvious and ostensible attraction.”