jejune, its handling was timid, while its coloration and tonality
were dry, not to say thin. Such was Rossetti's advent in art
under the Pre-Raphaelite banner. The picture's reception
was not encouraging, nor did the next work from his hands
induce him to emerge from that proud exclusiveness in which
all such minds as his are content to abide. The diverse moods
of the other Brothers chose otherwise, but of Rossetti's immediate
circle it has been truly said: “ It appears that of
seven young men and Brethren five have attained eminent
positions, four of them being pre-eminent, although for years
after the society was formed no single member, whatever his
position might be, escaped insult, obloquy and wicked and
malicious misrepresentation. The more conspicuous the
Brother [e.g. Miuaisl, the more outrageously was he attacked. ”
No estimate of Rossetti's genius, his triumph and his life as
a whole can be justly based without ample allowance being
made for. the circumstances which attended his advent as a
painter. “ Ecce Ancilla Dominil” the smaller picture which
is now in the National Gallery of British Art at Millbank, was
the one perfect outcome of the original motive of the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood by its representative and typical
member. It is replete with the mystical mood which then
ruled the painter's mind; that mood chose what may be
called virginal white and its harmonies as its aptest coloration,
and the intense light of morning sufficed for its tonality. It
was exhibited at the Portland Gallery in 1850. After these
pictures were finished, the outside world saw no more of Rossetti
as a painter until it had prepared itself to see modern art from
a higher plane than before.
In December 1850 there appeared the first number of The Germ, a magazine (which lasted for only four numbers) in which Rossetti had a leading place as the poet in verse and prose. The influence of Robert Browning upon Rossetti was more potent in The Germ than in that splendid romance in water-colours called “The Laboratory, ” where a court lady of the ancien regime visits an old poison-monger to obtain from him a fatal potion for her rival in love. This wonderful gem of colour, glowing in lurid and wicked passion and voluptuous suggestion, marked the opening of the artist's second period and signalized his departure from that phase of Pre-Raphaelitism of which “ Ecce Ancilla Domini!" was the crowning achievement, and, so far as he was concerned, the artistic ne plus ultra. Millais and the other Brothers remained faithful during several years yet to come. Later in 1850, Rossetti produced the original, which is in ink, of the famous “ Hesterna Rosa, " a gambling scene of men and their mistresses in a tent by lamplight, while pallid dawn gathers force between the trees without. Then came from his hands “ Borgia, ” which, like “ The Laboratory, ” is in water-colours, and, like “ Hesterna Rosa, ” is a sardonic tragedy. “How they met Themselves ” came next, and, in illustrating a legend similar to that of the Diippelganger, affirmed the force, the originality and the tragic passion of Rossetti's genius. Two lovers are walking in twilight Wood, where they are confronted suddenly by their apparitions, portending death. The year 1852 produced “ Giotto painting Dante's Portrait, ” and saw a new development of the painter's mind and mood, dashed with a humour not often to be seen in him. In its somewhat dry coloration it differed from the ardent jewel-like glow and deeper gloom of “ Borgia ” and its successor and the sumptuous visions of womanhood in later pictures. “ Found, ” Rossetti's sole contribution of the sort which Mr Holman Hunt affected, was begun somewhere about this period; but this piece of pictorial moralizing (the analogue of the poet's own “ lenny ”), vigorous and intensely pathetic as it is, was never really finished by its author, being, indeed, far remote from Rossetti's inner self, which was rather over-scornful of didactic art, and thoroughly indisposed towards attempts to ameliorate anybody's condition by means of pictures. Nor did the stringency of naturalistic painting suit his mood or his experience. Nevertheless, what is his in the existing picture remains a masterpiece of poetry with exquisitely finished parts, Passing a few fine but comparatively unimportant drawings, Tr, D. G.
such as “Lancelot and Guinevere at the Tomb of Arthur, " “Lancelot looking at the Dead Lady of Shalott, " “ Mariana of the South, ” “ Sir Galahad, ” “ The Blue Closet, ” and various works owing subjects to the Arthurian cycle of romances, we may note that the artist illustrated by five cuts Poems by Alfred Tennyson, on which Millais and Mr 'Holman Hunt were also engaged, and which was published by Moxon in 1857. As in “ Ecce Ancilla Dominil” we had virginal white and morning light employed to strengthen the mystical significance of the design, so in “ Borgia ” Venetian voluptuousness and sensuous splendours obtained, and in “ The Blue Closet ” is a very potent and suggestive exercise intended to symbolize the association of colour with music. The last is one of the subtlest of the artist's “inventions, ” and it shows how he had developed upon “ Borgia ” an artistic sympathy which is but too likely to be “ caviare to the general.” “ The Wedding of St George ” is not so fine; nor was “Lancelot's Dream of the Sangreal, ” Rossetti's part in the luckless decorations of the Oxford Union 1 (1857-58); nor are “ Guinevere and Sir Lancelot, ” “ Galahad in the Chapel ” and other Arthurian examples quite worthy of his art. “ Bocca Baciata, ” the super-sensuous portrait of a woman, a work of Wonderful fire, and the pictures on the pulpit at Llandaff Cathedral, marked the expiration of the second epoch in Rossetti's art and the beginning of a new, the third, last and most powerful of all the phases of his career. The picture “ Dr Johnson at the Mitre, ” when the “pretty fools ” consulted the lexicographer anent Methodism, is a good example of his humour.-In
1861 Rossetti produced several fine designs for stained glass, and in the revival of stained-glass painting as an art he had a larger share than has frequently been ascribed to him. The practice of designing upon a large scale, and employment of masses of splendid though deep-toned colours, had probably something to do with the prodigious development of his powers and the enlargement of his views as regards painting which took effect at this period (1862-63). At this time a striking and highly imaginative triptych, representing three events in the careers of Paolo and Francesca, was produced; it is a great improvement upon an earlier design. There is unprecedented energy in the group of the lovers embracing in the garden-house just as they have paused in reading the fatal romance. The composition of this group, with the circular window behind their figures, is as fine as it was comparatively novel in Rossetti's. practice. Its lurid coloration was so thoroughly in harmony with the pathos of the subject that in this respect the work excelled all the painter had previously produced. The same elements, energy, a sympathetic and poetic scheme of colour, and composition of a fine order, combined with far greater force and originality in “ The Bride, ” or “ The Beloved, ” that magnificent illustration of The Song of Solomon. The last named is a life-size group of powerfully coloured and diversely beautiful damsels accompanying their mistress with music and with song on her way to the bridegroom. This picture, as regards its brilliance, finish, the charms of four lovely faces and the splendour of its lighting, occupies a great place 'in the highest grade of modern art of all the world. It is likewise, so far as the qualities named are concerned, the crowning piece of Rossetti's art, and stands for him much as the “ Sacred and Profane Love ” of Titian represents that master. Very fine, indeed, but hardly so passionate and virile, is the “ Beata Beatrix, ” now in the National Gallery of British Art with “ Ecce Ancilla Domini!” which he produced thirteen years earlier. These works belong to a category of fine and quite original examples, all replete with 1 In 1857, Rossetti, when in Oxford with William Morris, conceived the design of filling the bays above the gallery in the then new Union debating room (now the library) with paintings from the Marte d'Arthur, and he enlisted the co-operation of several of his artistic circle, including Burne-]ones and William Morris, in the work, which was begun in August. Morris's picture was “Sir Palomides watching Tristram and lseult, " Burne-]ones's “ Nimue luring Merlin.” Unfortunately the walls were too new and not properlv prepared for painting; the colour soon began to fade and wear off, and in the course of twenty years or so the pictures became almost indistinguishable.
