Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story by Jan Marsh - A review

Elizabeth Siddal is remembered as a Pre-Raphaelite supermodel and the muse and wife of Gabriel Rossetti. She is cast as a tragic heroine much like the Ophelia she modelled in the renowned Millais painting. But Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story overturns this myth. ‘Lizzie’ is presented as an aspirational and independent woman, artist and poet who knew what she wanted and was not afraid to let it be known.

With extraordinary stories, including previously undiscovered details of Siddal’s journeys across the UK and to the south of France, Jan Marsh reclaims Siddal’s narrative from the historical record. She brings new perspective to the post-natal, mental trauma Elizabeth suffered after a stillbirth. Furthermore, she casts new light on the renowned story of Siddal’s grave being exhumed for Rossetti’s poems.

Jan Marsh explores the finer, little known details of Siddal’s life, including her four months at art school in Sheffield, which Rossetti’s brother always denied. In addition to this, few will know how Siddal was often regarded as difficult and ungrateful.

A beautiful production, this illustrated book contains many of Siddal's own images which feature alongside Rossetti's at Tate Britain.

Historical record tends to forget or misremember women, but with Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story, Jan Marsh forces us to take a closer look and see a very different picture. Siddal was not passive and lacking in agency; she was a woman, artist and poet with a strong mind, flourishing career and an admirable talent.

Jan Marsh is a biographer and curator who pioneered the feminist understanding of women in the artistic circle around the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. She followed this with individual life stories and scholarly studies that bring hitherto neglected women into the historical record, together with ground-breaking exhibitions, notably Pre-Raphaelite Sisters at the National Portrait Gallery in 2019-20. In Elizabeth Siddal: Her Story she presents a radical new account of the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite model and artist, who died tragically young.

Publisher:  Pallas Athene

Publication date: 6 April 2023

Hardback – 165 x 198 mm – 158 pages

101 colour and black-and-white images

Elizabeth Siddal by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

There was an English dinner here on Christmas Day, ending with plum-pudding, which was really very good indeed, and an honour to the country. I dined up in my room where I have dined for the last three weeks on account of bores. First class, one can get to the end of the world but one can never be alone or left at rest.  (Elizabeth Siddal writing her travel memories in a fit of boredom from Hotel des Princes, France, 1855).

Elizabeth Siddal Her Story is an illustrated look at the life of Elizabeth Siddal and those around her before and after meeting the men of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The paintings and drawing by herself and her husband, painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti are currently being shown in the Tate Britian exhibition, The Rossettis. 

"Lizzie" needed an upgrade shall we say; a much needed complete study of her life and Jan Marsh is just the woman to do it.  Her findings from researching the Siddall family to Elizabeth's first working jobs, to being discovered, to becoming a sitter, then a muse to finding love with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Her illness, her weight, her looks. Was she just very independent in nature or was she doing her best to serve as inspiration for all these creative men!  It must have been hell.

Jan Marsh has debunked a very long standing myth, she has shared two letters Elizabeth Siddal wrote herself that give insight into Elizabeth's wonderful sense of humor. Jan Marsh writes about the relationship with John Ruskin, her trip to France, as well as what inspired Elizabeth Siddal to writer her poetry and paint her paintings. 

You will travel with The Rossettis (Gabriel and Lizzie) as they travel through England meeting some of his dearest artist friends and why Elizabeth did not meet all of her husband's immediate family.  Sharing artisitic experiences between the two I found to be very romantic, i.e. Rossetti's many poems about Lizzie but to get a glimpse into Elizabeth's poems and paintings while in love with Gabriel was just beautiful.

When it came to the sad end of Elizabeth's life, Jan Marsh uses  her paintings to support the well known surviving documentation surrounding her death, her burial, her funeral, etc. 

I will put the link to the publishing company for ayone who would like to purchase, Pallas Athene

The funeral of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Remembrances (April 9 & 14, 1882)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet

He is not a prophet, but an artist; yet an artist who, by the very intensity of his artistic vision, and by some inborn bent toward symbol and mysticism, stands on the side of those who see in material things a spiritual significance, and utters words of universal meaning from the fullness of his own heart. (William Morris, Arts & Crafts Movement, describing Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

 

 

 

 

As Dante Gabriel Rossetti's health was declining, his brother William wanted a death mask made, so he asked a man from Brucciari's to come to Gabriel's bungalow in Birchington-On-Sea.  When William saw such a peaceful expression on his brother's face, he then asked Frederick Shields if he would draw Gabriel's face. He made one for William and one for their sister, Christina Rossetti - the poetess.  It was then time for William's daughter, Lucy, himself, and Christina to visit the Rectory to meet Mr. Alcock. They all walked to the churchyard to choose a spot for the grave.  Mr. Martin then made the funeral arrangements.  

Dear Mr. Scott - I think you will like to hear your dear friend Gabriel Rossetti was buried, so I will tell you- The church at Birchington stands back about three quarters of a mile from the sea on slightly rising ground which looks over the open land and the sea.  I thought simply; it is nicely kept, and to-day was full of Easter flowers. Close to Gabriel's grave there was a laurestinus and a lilac. 

At the gravesite, wonderful to say, was the old mother supported by William on one side and Christina on the other - a most pathetic sight. She was very calm, extraordinarily calm, but whether from self-command, or the passivity of age, I do not know - probably from both; but she followed all the proceedings with close interest.  Then around was a company of about fifteen or twenty, many of them friends of yours, and several of them whom I did not know. The service was well read by the vicar.  Then we all looked into the resting place of our friend, and thought and felt our last farewells - many flowers, azealas, and primrose, were thrown in. I saw William throw in his Lily of the Valley.

This is all I have to tell you.  Sad it was, very sad but simple and full of feeling and the fresh beauty of the day made itself felt with all the rest.  I shook hands with William and came home with Mr. Graham.  Dear Gabriel, I shall not forget him. (Vernon Lushington letter to William Bell Scott, 14 April, 1882)

The church in Birchington was a clifftop setting overlooking the sea.  It was the opposite to what you find at Highgate Cemetery in London which is exactly what Dante Gabriel Rossetti wanted. Separating his burial location from that of his family allowed Rossetti's achievements as a poet, translator, and artist to be commemorated by his dearest friends.  Colleague, Ford Maddox Brown, was asked by William Michael Rossetti if he would design a monument for his brother's grave and the cross was added. Walter Caine and Theodore Watts were the last to leave Birchington. Walter Caine describes his farewell visit to his friends grave, 

We walked one morning to the churchyard and found Gabriel's grave strewn with flowers. It was a quiet spring day, the birds were singing, and the yellow flowers were beginning to show. As we stood by the grave under the shadow of the quaint old church, with the broad sweep of landscape in front, so flat that the great dome of the sea appeared to lie on it, and with the sleepy rumble of the rolling waters borne to us from the shore, we could not but feel that little as we had thought to leave Rossetti there, no other place could be quite so fit. 

Three of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's closest friends wrote In Memoriam poems in his honor : one on the day of his death April 9 1882 and two poems on the day of his funeral April 14, 1882.  

 At the Grave of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by Mackenzie Bell

HERE of a truth the world’s extremes are met:
Amid the gray, the moss-grown tombs of those
Who led long lives obscure till came the close
When, their calm days being done, their suns were set—
Here stands a grave, all monumentless yet,	5
Wrapped like the others in a deep repose;
But while yon wakeful ocean ebbs and flows
It is a grave the world shall not forget,
This grave on which meek violets grow and thyme,
Summer’s fair heralds; and a stranger now	10
Pauses to see a poet’s resting-place,
But one of those who will in many a clime
On each return of this sad day avow
Fond love’s regret that ne’er they saw his face. April 9th, 1882

A GRAVE BY THE SEA

I Yon sightless poet [157] whom thou leav’st behind,    Sightless and trembling like a storm-struck tree,    Above the grave he feels but cannot see, Save with the vision Sorrow lends the mind, Is he indeed the loneliest of mankind?    Ah no!—For all his sobs, he seems to me    Less lonely standing there, and nearer thee, Than I—less lonely, nearer—standing blind! Free from the day, and piercing Life’s disguise    That needs must partly enveil true heart from heart,    His inner eyes may see thee as thou art In Memory’s land—see thee beneath the skies Lit by thy brow—by those beloved eyes,    While I stand by him in a world apart. II I stand like her who on the glittering Rhine    Saw that strange swan which drew a faëry boat    Where shone a knight whose radiant forehead smote Her soul with light and made her blue eyes shine p. 158For many a day with sights that seemed divine,    Till that false swan returned and arched his throat    In pride, and called him, and she saw him float Adown the stream: I stand like her and pine. I stand like her, for she, and only she, Might know my loneliness for want of thee.    Light swam into her soul, she asked not whence, Filled it with joy no clouds of life could smother,    And then, departing like a vision thence, Left her more lonely than the blind, my brother. III Last night Death whispered: ‘Death is but the name    Man gives the Power which lends him life and light,    And then, returning past the coast of night, Takes what it lent to shores from whence it came. What balm in knowing the dark doth but reclaim    The sun it lent, if day hath taken flight?    Art thou not vanished—vanished from my sight— Though somewhere shining, vanished all the same? With Nature dumb, save for the billows’ moan,    Engirt by men I love, yet desolate— Standing with brothers here, yet dazed and lone,    King’d by my sorrow, made by grief so great That man’s voice murmurs like an insect’s drone—    What balm, I ask, in knowing that Death is Fate? IV Last night Death whispered: ‘Life’s purblind procession,    Flickering with blazon of the human story—    Time’s fen-flame over Death’s dark territory— Will leave no trail, no sign of Life’s aggression. Yon moon that strikes the pane, the stars in session,    Are weak as Man they mock with fleeting glory.    Since Life is only Death’s frail feudatory, How shall love hold of Fate in true possession?’ p. 159I answered thus: ‘If Friendship’s isle of palm    Is but a vision, every loveliest leaf, Can Knowledge of its mockery soothe and calm    This soul of mine in this most fiery grief?    If Love but holds of Life through Death in fief, What balm in knowing that Love is Death’s—what balm?’ V Yea, thus I boldly answered Death—even I    Who have for boon—who have for deathless dower—    Thy love, dear friend, which broods, a magic power, Filling with music earth and sea and sky: ‘O Death,’ I said, ‘not Love, but thou shalt die;    For, this I know, though thine is now the hour,    And thine these angry clouds of doom that lour, Death striking Love but strikes to deify.’ Yet while I spoke I sighed in loneliness, For strange seemed Man, and Life seemed comfortless,    And night, whom we two loved, seemed strange and dumb; And, waiting till the dawn the promised sign, I watched—I listened for that voice of thine,    Though Reason said: ‘Nor voice nor face can come.’ Birchington,          Eastertide, 1882.

In Memoriam by Eugene Lee Hamilton

Marston, mourn not; Rossetti is not dead

Though chill as clay is now his shrouded brow

Nor grudge the grave the flesh it gathers now

The soul remains to live on earth instead.

And though that I was his friend if e'er I said 

A word in harshness, hear me disavow,

While such small wreath as I can wreathe I throw

Upon the stone that covers now his head.

The Wintry Breath of Azrael that swept 

A green leaf to the heap of bygone leaves

Where Alighieri and where Shakespeare lie.

Mourn not.  Each day some brother dies unwept,

But he for whom the distant stranger grieves

Outlives mere life; for men he doth not die. 

April 14, 1882

William Bell Scott; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; John Ruskin

albumen carte-de-visite, 29 June 1863, NPG-UK

Rossetti's Portraits: Upcoming exhibition at The Holburne Museum 24 September 2021 to 9 January 2022

 

Blue Silk Dress (Jane Morris), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868 © Society of Antiquaries of London: Kelmscott Manor

Rossetti’s Portraits features some of his most iconic artworks, including The Blue Silk Dress (Jane Morris), 1868, which reveal the artist at the height of his creative powers, alongside his less well-known, but equally compelling early drawings of friends, family and fellow Pre-Raphaelite artists. The exhibition also explores the artist’s intimate relationship with his muses and their influence on his depiction of beauty.  Extract from Holburne Museum website

I have been working on Mrs. Morris's portrait and have nearly finished it. I think it is better than the run of my doings. Dante Gabriel Rossetti letter to Alice Boyd of 24 July 1868.

Combining paintings, drawings, and photography from across the artist’s career, including some of his most celebrated and accomplished works, Rossetti’s Portraits opens with drawings of his early social circle, including members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood during the early 1850s. Extract from The Holburn Museum website.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s portrait of William Holman Hunt was sketched on the morning of 12th April 1853

As young artists starting their careers, ambitious to ‘make it’ in the art world, the Pre-Raphaelites frequently practised drawing each other to improve their observational skills, as well as saving money on models. These drawings were often created out of mutual affection and were exchanged as gifts. Rossetti’s portrait of William Holman Hunt was sketched on the morning of 12th April 1853 as one of several portraits created by the group to send out to Thomas Woolner, a Pre-Raphaelite sculptor who had emigrated to Australia to try his luck on that continent.  Extract from The Holburne Museum website

The Blue Bower by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1865

The sitter is Fanny Cornforth, Rossetti's housekeeper and mistress.

The Barber Institute of Fine Arts

Cornforth is the focus of one of Rossetti’s masterpieces, The Blue Bower (1865, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts), a painting infused with symbolism relating to the sitter. The blue cornflowers refer to her surname, while the passion flowers suggest her fiery nature. Indeed, the work has the feel of a character study; Cornforth commands the spectator’s gaze, as if to challenge their observation of her beauty.  Extract from The Holburne Museum website.

Elizabeth Siddal drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

May 1854, in Hastings, V&A

The next section features a selection of intimate and poignant drawings from the 1850s of the artist’s wife and pupil, Elizabeth Siddal (1829–1862), showing the many facets of their relationship as a couple, as artistic peers, and as artist and model.

Famous for posing in John Everett Millais’ Ophelia (1851-52, Tate), Siddal modelled for several Pre-Raphaelite artists before sitting exclusively for Rossetti from 1852 onwards. Alongside her work as a model, Siddal pursued her own artistic interests and was the only woman to exhibit at the 1857 Pre-Raphaelite display at Russell Place. Rossetti made a series of beautifully intimate studies of her carrying out everyday tasks and the works displayed at the Holburne allow visitors to see the daily life that ‘Lizzie’ and Rossetti shared together. Siddal frequently suffered from ill-health and a drawing he made of her during a stay in Hastings where they had gone for her to recuperate from the latest bout of illness features in the show. Siddal died tragically in 1862 aged only 32.  Extract from The Holburne Museum. 

For more information about the exhibition, The Holburne Museum

Christina Rossetti's Parents: Gabriele Rossetti (1783-1854) and Frances Rossetti nee Polidori (1800-1886)

I've been reading up on the patriarch of The Rossetti Family:  Gabriele Rossetti (1783-1854) out of curiosity. I've just started reading, Dinah Roe's family tome, The Rossettis in Wonderland, and my curiosity has been running wild! 

So, I am including a few fun tidbits from father of Poet, Christina Rossetti and painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.  First a bit of background:

Gabriele Rossetti was born in Vesto, in Abruzzi, Italy, on the Adriatic coast of Naples. He was custodian in the Museo Barbonico of Naples. He was also a poet as well. He was part of a movement supporting the constitution to Ferdinand I of Naples in 1820. He fled to London after the king revoked the constitution and persecuted the abettors. 

Having settled in London, he married Frances Polidori in 1824 and became Professor of Italian in Kings College. He also published two works on Dante. Later in life, one of his sons, William Michael Rossetti, published his memoirs and letters. 

One Stanza from poem

 Life In Italy by Gabriele Rossetti,

My children, grow, grow up to patriot love

In you the blood and name of me is stored

To England from Abruzzo transmigrate.

Free you were born, and I was born a serf.

O Providence! Mine exiled seemed to me

To dive injustice of a Fate my foe;

But, if mine exiles was to prove

A family like this, I bless the ban.

Yes, for they deadly rage which hurled me forth,

Perfidious Bourbon King, I give thee thanks.

Frances Mary Lavinia Rossetti (nee Polidori)

Drawing by her son, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1877

(Rossetti Archive)

Frances Polidori was the daughter of Gaetano Polidori. She was English on her mother's side and Italian, from Tuscany, on her father's side. The Polidori's were a prominent family with ties to some who would become some of the greatest Romantic poets of our day. She married Gabriele Rossetti and had four children all academics and poets in their own right: 

Maria Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti.

Two samples from letters written by husband, Gabriele Rossetti to his wife, Frances Rossetti:

38 Charlotte Street, London

29th May 1832

My Dearly Loved Frances,

Every word you wrote pierced like a dagger into my heart. My sweetest Gabriel, there is so ill! My baby Christina suffers with her teeth and has wounded her forehead! Oh my poor children! If the distance were less great, I would come immediately to see my four treasures, and you, my beloved wife, who must be immeasurably afflicted, as I am myself. Good-bye, dearly loved, Frances, I am going to bed for it is 1 o'clock. I bless one by one the infant pledges of our love, and invoke on them health and prosperity. Kiss them for me, speak about me to them, and along with theirs-preserve your precious health, which is my greatest treasure. 

Your most affectionate husband,

Gabriele Rossetti

Gabriele Rossetti drawn by son,

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1848

(Rossetti Archive)

50 Charlotte Street, London

21 October 1836

My Dearest Frances,

Oh that I had two arms as long as from here to Holmer Green! You would find your neck clasped of a sudden by the warmest marital embrace, and you would then be softly seized hold of and deposited in Charlotte Street, saving you the trouble of the journey by road: Yours should be aerial...The true one treasure of my life is my dear Frances, and to restore her to me renewed in health is to restore my existence. Good-bye to the better portion of myself. Three days hence you, by God's help, will be here with me and I will prove to you how much you are loved by 

Your Husband,

Gabriele

In closing, while reading through my source material; the opening pages consisted of a copied handwritten letter from Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter and poet, to his mother, Frances Rossetti, a month before his wedding. He talks about his girlfriend, Elizabeth Siddal 'Lizzie'  which he spells (Lizzy not Lizzie), her ill health, and his concerns. The typed version is below the handwritten letter.  

Mrs. Rossetti, photographer unknown.

This miniature is in fact a photograph (probably an albumen print) painted over in gouache. The over-painting has been attributed to Elizabeth Siddall's husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the English poet and founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, formed in London in 1848. The lavish frame in gold, opal, sapphires and diamonds (made in London) was added in 1906 by J. Pierpont Morgan, a previous owner, and it was cataloged by G.C. Williamson in the same year as "Mrs. Rossetti." The story attached to the photograph is that, after Siddall's death in February 1862, Rossetti gave it to a nurse who had attended at the birth of Siddall's still-born child, and that it passed to the nurse's daughter, who in difficult financial times sold it to a clergyman (see G.C. Williamson, "Catalogue of the Collection of Miniatures, the Property of J. Pierpont Morgan," vol. 2, London: Chiswick Press, 1906, p. 116). This story is also told by Williamson with some variations in "Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan's Pictures, the English Miniatures, V.," Connoisseur, 8:70, June 1907, pp. 71-76, p. 75; "Stories of an Expert," 1935, pp. 36-39; and "The Cases of an Art Expert, II, The Rossetti Miniature," Country Life, 80, 11 July 1936, p. 35-6.). The costume is correct for ca. 1860 and the portrait shows strong resemblances to Siddall as depicted in several studies and paintings by Rossetti. The pose recalls the posthumously completed painting "Beata Beatrix" (ca.1864-70), Tate Britain, London, N01279. --  Archived at The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD.

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Frances Rossetti (DGRs mother)

SOURCE for letters from Gabriele to Frances Rossetti and poem

Gabriele Rossetti: A Verified Autobiography by Gabriele Rossetti, Translated by William Michael Rossetti, London, 1901

SOURCE for letter from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to his mother, Frances Rossetti

US Edition: Handwritten version:  Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Family Letters by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Volume II, Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1895.

UK Edition: Typed version:  (same book as above), Volume II, London, Ellis + Elvey, 1895.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti napping and Lizzie Siddal

D.G. Rossetti Napping by Ford Madox Brown

Writing on right side reads:

D.G.R. 

as seen

August 18/79

FMB

I love the way he’s balancing his legs on the top of the sofa.

Rossovestita by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1850

Note Rossetti’s name on top:

Dante Rossetti

Fece in Londra

This was the first time Elizabeth Siddal modeled for Rossetti.

St. George and the Princess Sabra by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1862
 Elizabeth Siddal sat for this just a few days before her death.

Current Exhibition: Painting with Light Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the modern age Tate Britain: Exhibition 11 May – 25 September 2016

Prosperine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874, oil on canvas - The Odor of Pomegranates by Zaida Ben-Yusuf, 1899, Photogravure on paper

Tate Britain, London presents: Painting with Light  Art and Photography from the Pre-Raphaelites to the modern age exhibition running from 11 May-25 September 2016. 

This is the first major exhibition to celebrate the spirited conversation between early photography and British art. It brings together photographs and paintings including Pre-Raphaelite, Aesthetic and British impressionist works. 

 

Spanning 75 years across the Victorian and Edwardian ages, the exhibition opens with the experimental beginnings of photography in dialogue with painters such as J.M.W. Turner. For the first time works by painters John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and John Singer Sargent will be shown alongside ravishing photographs by pivotal early photographers such as Julia Margaret Cameron, which they inspired and which inspired them.

exhibition catalogue featuring cover photograph

Decorative Study by Minna Keene, 1906

© Royal Photographic Society / National Media Museum/ Science & Society Picture Library

An exploration of the relationship between photography, painting and sculpture, from the 1840s to 1914

Photography was entangled with art from the very moment of its invention by painter and printmaker Louis Daguerre in 1839. Painting with Light is the first publication to explore photography's complex and fascinating inter-relationship with painting and sculpture in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Opening with the experimental beginnings of the medium in the 1830s and 40s, the book covers the full range of photography in Britain up to the early 1900s, concluding with its flowering as a distinct art form in Pictorialism, which sought to express emotional and imaginative states through the photographic image.

 Spanning seventy-five years from the daguerreotype to very early colour photography, the book explores pioneer photographers, the Pre-Raphaelite circle and ravishing Symbolist and Pictorialist works, including landscapes and life studies, documentary and scientific realism, and images that experimented with atmospheric and psychological effects. Organised chronologically, it features essays on the camera before the1840s; David Octavius Hill's pioneering photography studio; the connections between early photographic and artistic approaches to nature; social realism; and anti-naturalism and the supernatural. It uncovers the issues raised by exchanges between photography and other media, many of them still live today, from the question of copying versus creating and truth versus lies to artist versus machine and tradition versus modernity. Mixing iconic and rarely seen works, Photography into Art includes over one hundred illustrations accompanied by refreshing new scholarship - making this the essential book for collectors, gallery goers and photography enthusiasts alike 

Tate Britain

Millbank, London SW1P 4RG, 

United Kingdom

To purchase tickets to the exhibition or for more information, Painting with Light

 

Pre-Raphaelites on Paper. Victorian Drawings from the Lanigan Collection at Leighton House Museum

Pre-Raphaelites on Paper. Victorian Drawings from the Lanigan Collection

Watch a glimpse of just what beautiful drawings are on exhibit

inside Leighton House Museum

 

If you happen to be in London at the moment, you are in for such a treat!  For the first time, Pre-Raphaelites on Paper: Victorian Drawings features over 100 drawings and sketches by the Pre-Raphaelites and their contemporaries: Edward Burne-Jones's study of The Wheel of Fortune (1883), John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Dante’s Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (1874), Edward Poynter and Frederic Leighton himself.  Leighton is represented by five drawings including a study for Clytie, his last work, which was acquired by Leighton House in 2008. Also featured are works by Rossetti’s wife Lizzie Siddal and a study by William Morris for his only known easel painting La Belle Iseult (c.1857).  

Edward Burne-Jones's study of The Wheel of Fortune (1883)

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Dante’s Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice (1874)

William Morris's  Study of La Belle Iseult (c.1857)

 

It is the first exhibition opening at Leighton House Museum this year. It presents an exceptional, privately assembled collection to the UK public for the first time. This outstanding collection, brought together over a 30-year period by Canadian Dr. Dennis T. Lanigan. The exhibition, organised by the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), expresses the richness and flair of British draughtsmanship during the Victorian era.

To buy tickets to the exhibition or for more information, Leighton House Museum  

Also, do not miss a special lecture taking place at Leighton House Museum with independent art historian and curator, Christopher Newall.

The Day-Dream of Painting: the Purposes of Drawing in Victorian England

Thursday 21 April 2016

With reference to the drawings on display in the exhibition, Pre-Raphaelites on Paper. Victorian Drawings from the Lanigan Collection, independent art historian and curator Christopher Newall, will explore the various purposes for which drawings were made in the Victorian period; from works that were to be seen and sold to private meditations, personal to the artist.

Lecture starts at 7pm; doors open at 6:15pm for the chance to see the exhibition.

Special Ticket offer: £10; ticket price includes access to Leighton House Museum, complimentary drink and entry to the lecture

Enter PROMOTIONAL CODE SPECIAL10 when booking on  Eventbrite

Pre-Raphaelites on Paper: Victorian Drawings

Pre-Raphaelites on Paper: Victorian Drawings

The poetry of Julia Margaret Cameron and Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 

Julia Margaret Cameron

I wanted to share two poems one written by Julia Margaret Cameron and one by her husband Charles Hay Cameron along with two translations of 'Lenore' for this World Poetry Day.  

On a Portrait

Oh, mystery of Beauty! who can tell

Thy mighty influence? who can best descry

How secret, swift, and subtle is the spell

Wherein the music of thy voice doth lie?

Here we have eyes so full of fervent love,

That but for lids behind which sorrow’s touch

Doth press and linger, one could almost prove

That Earth had loved her favourite over much.

A mouth where silence seems to gather strength

From lips so gently closed, that almost say,

“Ask not my story, lest you hear at length

Of sorrows where sweet hope has lost its way.”

And yet the head is borne so proudly high,

The soft round cheek, so splendid in its bloom,

True courage rises thro’ the brilliant eye,

And great resolve comes flashing thro’ the gloom.

Oh, noble painter! more than genius goes

To search the key-note of those melodies,

To find the depths of all those tragic woes,

Tune thy song right and paint rare harmonies.

Genius and love have each fulfilled their part,

And both unite with force and equal grace,

Whilst all that we love best in classic art

Is stamped for ever on the immortal face.

                                Julia Margaret Cameron

September, 1875

(Julia’s poem was printed in the February 1876 edition of Macmillan Magazine)

Charles Hay Cameron by Julia Margaret Cameron

Her husband Charles Hay Cameron, wrote a goodbye poem to his Freshwater friends that was included in one of his surviving letters when he and his wife decided to leave for London:

The English Channel famed in war

The Solent sea and winding Yar

Have cut an islet, yet not quite

An islet from the Isle of Wight,

For ‘twixt the Channel famed in war

And silent sources of the Yar,

Dry land the twentieth of a mile

Unites it to the parent isle.

There dwell, I fronting Afton Down,

With little Yarmouth for my nearest town,

The little Yarmouth where the Yar

Though hindered by its gathering bar

After four miles of winding reach

At length divides the yellow beach,

And meets in Solent’s brine the rills

That southward flow from Hampshire’s hills.

 

 

Maclise's Illustrations of Leonora, one of two 1847 editions

 Daniel Maclise, R.A. by Maull & Polyblank

albumen carte-de-visite, mid 1860s

 

 In 1847, Julia Margaret Cameron published an illustrated book, ‘Leonora’ translated from German into English. It is based upon a German ballad or poem by Gottfried Burger in 1775. It was a favorite of hers. She asked her friend Daniel Maclise, painter at the time, to illustrate it and he complied. Partaking in the translation process was John Herschel a mathematician and astronomer as well as good friend of hers. He went through the translations with her along with the help of his two daughters who also spoke German.

 

 Introductory page of Leonora translated by Julia Margaret Cameron

illustrated by Daniel Maclise, R.A. 

London, 1847 edition

The story of ‘Leonora’ is a sad one. William, who is engaged to Leonore, has not returned from the Seven Years’ War yet. He had gone to battle in the army of King Frederick. She misses him terribly and longs for his return. She never receives any news or word from him. When the other men return from war without William, she gets very angry with God. This angers her mother saying it is blasphemous to say such things to God and have such feelings. She believes her daughter will be condemned to hell for it. Leonore’s mother tells her that William is probably still in Hungary and she should just forget him.  When a stranger (who looks very much like William) appears at the door late one night asking for Lenore, she gets on horseback with him and rides away to his home to marry him. They are riding so fast, she asks him why and he says, “the dead travel fast.” She replies, “leave the dead alone.” They arrive at the doors of a cemetery as the horse begins to walk through the tombstones. She watches the knight begin to lose his human appearance and she realizes he is the image of Death. He is a skeleton carrying a scythe and an hourglass. William’s skeleton lies next to his grave and shattered armour. The ground beneath Lenore’s feet start to give way while spirits dance around her, “no one is to quarrel with God in Heaven.” 

It seems that ‘Leonore’ was published three years prior in June of 1844 by a young man named Gabriel Charles Rossetti. Hm, could it be good ole’ Rossetti himself? Well, according to his younger brother, William Michael Rossetti it is the one and the same! 

 

Now known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, he translated Burger’s ballad around June 1844. He wrote it at the age of sixteen in May of that year. He was studying German at the time with Dr. Adolf Heimann, of University College in London who later became a family friend. He never kept up the language nor was he satisfied with his poorly translated version of  ‘Lenore’.

A translator ought to be faithful, but is not bound down to being literal; he is compelled to make various mutual concessions between meaning and rhythm or rhyme; and in especial he must not turn a good poem into a bad one. (The Early Italian Poets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1861)

A young Rossetti fell in love with Burger’s original ‘Lenore’ romanticizing the sad love story. Not wanting his version to be too overly religious or sad, he downplayed the sadness making it more romantic in tone. He changed the then Protestant religious aspects of the poem into Roman Catholic ones softening the hardened stanzas. He played up the picturesque words and turned his version of ‘Lenore’ into a romantic painting depicted with words.

    “My mother, what is happiness?

    My mother, what is Hell?

    With William is my happiness,—

    Without him is my Hell!

    Spark of my life! down, down to the tomb:

    Die away in the night, die away in the gloom!

    Earth and Heaven, and Heaven and earth,

    Reft of William are nothing worth.”

    Thus grief racked and tore the breast of Lenore,

    And was busy at her brain;

    Thus rose her cry to the Power on high,

    To question and arraign:

    Wringing her hands and beating her breast,—

    Tossing and rocking without any rest;—

    Till from her light veil the moon shone

    thro',

    And the stars leapt out on the dark-

    -ling blue.

  If you would like to read Julia Margaret Cameron's, Leonora  and see all of Daniel Maclise's beautiful illustrations 

If you would like to read Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Lenore it is on Rossetti Archive