Chapter V: Work From 1854 to 1857

Rossetti's work, during the earlier part of the period we have been glancing through, was of a particularly interesting, and towards the latter end of a sufficiently varied character. In range of subject it belongs to the category described in Chapter III, with the important addition that now for the first time is added to his sources of romantic inspiration the "Morte Darthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. This cycle of old Celtic legends had been for many years practically a sealed book in England, and its popularity to-day is largely owing to the interest revived in it by Rossetti, and later by the famous group of Oxford friends, including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti had become acquainted with Malory by 1854, which is the date of that strange, sad little water-colour, _King Arthur's Tomb_, representing, in an imaginary scene, Launcelot bidding a last farewell to Guenevere. Apart from this Rossetti had in hand a number of drawings which were continually put on one side as fresh ideas crowded into his restless brain, and were often not finished until many years later. The statement could easily be verified, that many, if not most, of Rossetti's later pictures were planned during these early strenuous years of his life, so that it is not to be wondered at that the actual finished work of these early years was sparse in quantity and slight in quality--much slighter, for instance, than the two religious paintings with which he had begun his career. On the other hand, for many people these little water-colours of Rossetti's second period have a charm that nothing in his larger and more elaborated later work can recall.

In the early part of 1854 Rossetti wrote to Ruskin that he was occupied with ideas for three subjects, _Found_, _Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon_, and another which is not named, but which from the context one may infer to have been the water-colour diptych of _Paolo and Francesco da Rimini_. In August of the same year he wrote that he was at work on a _Hamlet and Ophelia_, "deeply symbolical of course," and predestined for the folio which Millais had presented, and which was still supposed to be in circulation among the members of a select sketching club. About the same time he submitted to Ruskin two designs for _The Passover_, one of which was chosen to be begun at once, while Ruskin also commissioned seven drawings from the "Purgatorio," of which one certainly, _Matilda gathering Flowers_, was very shortly put in hand. None of these undertakings saw the light for at least another year; the _Hamlet_ not for four or five. The _Matilda_ was finished first and delivered in September 1855, and on the 2nd December Madox Brown records in his diary, _apropos_ Miss Siddal being stranded in Paris without money, "Gabriel, who saw that none of the drawings on the easel could be completed before long, began a fresh one, _Francesca da Rimini_, in _three compartments_; worked day and night, finished it in a week, got thirty-five guineas for it from Ruskin, and started off to relieve them." This was the earliest version of a subject that Rossetti returned to more than once, representing in one compartment the lover's kiss, and in the second their two souls floating clasped together in Hell through a rain of pale sulphurous flames. Between the compartments are two figures meant for Dante and Virgil, with the words "O Lasso!" Within the same period, viz., by October, 1855, another Dante subject, _The Vision of Rachel and Leah_, was taken up and completed.

_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.

(2) _The Death of Breuse sans Pitié_, one of the crudest and least successful of Rossetti's water-colours.

(3) _The Chapel before the Lists_, a scene suggested by Malory of a lady helping to arm a kneeling knight, her long white head-dress, as she stoops to kiss him, falling like a mantle down her blue dress. Upon the pointed shield of the knight is a figure of a maiden in distress. Beyond the chapel is a tented field, and knights going forth to joust.

(4) _The Tune of Seven Towers_, a quaint little scene, very characteristic of Rossetti's fertility and originality of invention. A lady in red with mediaeval head-dress is sitting in a high oaken chair, which above towers up into a sort of belfry, and is playing upon a musical instrument which also forms part of the chair. A man in green doublet, with long boots, sits sideways on a stool close by watching her, and a second lady stands mournfully behind. A banner hangs down at the right from a pole which cuts the picture diagonally in half.

(5) _The Blue Closet_, illustrated and described elsewhere.

_The Wedding of St. George_, in the same collection, belongs to this year, but was not acquired from Mr. Morris. The old story of St. George and the Dragon had a powerful influence upon the romantic school to which Rossetti belonged. Burne-Jones's variations upon it are well known, and Rossetti also, besides treating it as a whole in a series of designs for stained glass windows, painted St. George more than once at typical stages of the adventure. In this earliest version he is resting from his feat, clad in armour, with a gorgeous surcoat, whilst the princess kneels and leans her head upon his breast, cutting off a long dark lock of hair which she has bound upon the crest of his helmet. The dragon's head, a monstrous object, stands grotesquely in one corner in a box with ropes attached for drawing it along. In the background is a hedge of flowers and attendant angels playing on bells.

The artistic and romantic impulses stirring in England at the midpoint of the century had, as we have seen, produced one notable movement in the shape of the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood." Five or six years later they gave rise to another, not less important, and shortly afterwards a fusion of the two took place. The second of these "Brotherhoods"--the word was actually adopted for a time--had its origin at Exeter College, Oxford, in the personalities of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, and resolved itself at first, like its forerunner, into a "crusade and holy warfare against the age," with an added religious tinge which was hardly visible in the other. The Oxford group, like the "P.R.B.," published a magazine to illustrate, not to preach, their principles, and had as a tangible link with Rossetti the same warm appreciation of the beauties of the Arthurian legend first introduced to their notice by Burne-Jones.

In the Christmas vacation of 1855 Burne-Jones came up to London, and after attending a meeting of the Working Men's College in order to see Rossetti, whom he and Morris had already begun to worship, he was introduced to him at Vernon Lushington's rooms in Doctors' Commons. The next day he visited Rossetti in his studio at Blackfriars, and saw him working on _Fra Pace_. Thus was laid the foundation of an alliance which even more potently than the "P.R.B." has changed the face of art in England, and which resulted in the formation of a group that for combined poetic, literary, and artistic power is unapproached in the history of the nation. Incidentally, it was this visit that determined Burne-Jones--hankering after art, but predestined for the Church--to become a painter; and no one can fail to be struck with the evidence of Rossetti's influence upon his early work.

To the "Oxford and Cambridge Magazine," William Morris's organ, which ran for the twelve months of 1856, Rossetti contributed "The Burden of Nineveh," "The Blessed Damozel" (a little altered from the "Germ" version), and "The Staff and Scrip."

By the end of 1856 Burne-Jones and Morris had left Oxford and were settled in London, occupying the rooms at 17, Red Lion Square, which had formerly served as a studio for Rossetti and Deverell. Both were under the spell of Rossetti's influence. The _ménage_ at Red Lion Square lasted till 1859, and was a rallying point for all members of the circle. "From the incidents that occurred or were invented there," says Mr. Mackail, "a sort of Book of the Hundred Merry Tales gradually was formed, of which Morris was the central figure." The rooms were "the quaintest in all London," as Burne-Jones wrote, "hung with brasses of old knights and drawings of Albert Dürer"; and in order to furnish them recourse had to be had to invention. A local joiner was engaged to manufacture furniture from Morris's own designs: "intensely mediaeval" was Rossetti's description of it to a friend, "tables and chairs like incubi and succubi." Next came the idea of painting pictures on walls, cupboards, and doors, about the time that Morris was planning to build himself at Upton, in the neighbourhood of Bexley Heath, a "palace of art" the like of which should never have been seen. In the general enthusiasm Rossetti set to and designed a pair of panels for a cabinet--the subject of his early pen-and-ink drawing, _The Salutation of Beatrice_, representing in two compartments Dante meeting Beatrice in Florence, and again in Paradise.

At the risk of repetition, one may mention once more a side of the movement which is apt to be overshadowed by its far-reaching results; namely, the light-heartedness and sense of fun which prevailed amongst this band of artistic pioneers. There was nothing of the mawkish affectation which discredited the aesthetes who came after. When Burne-Jones was down at Upton, helping to decorate the Red House in 1860, Rossetti wrote to a mutual friend: "I wish you were in town, to see you sometimes, for I literally see no one now except Madox Brown pretty often, and even he is gone to join Morris, who is out of reach at Upton, and with them is married Jones painting the inner walls of the house that Top built (Morris was always called 'Topsy' by his friends). But as for the neighbours, when they see men pourtrayed by Jones upon the walls, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed (by _him!_) in Extract Vermilion, exceeding all probability in dyed attire upon their heads, after the manner of no Babylonians of any Chaldea, the land of anyone's nativity--as soon as they see them with their eyes, shall they not account him doting and send messengers into Colney Hatch?"

During the long vacation of 1857 Rossetti went up to Oxford with Morris on a visit to the architect, Benjamin Woodward, who was at work upon a debating hall for the Union Society, and seeing an opportunity for mural decoration of a kind never previously attempted in England in the new hall of the Union, he became fired with an idea for carrying it out. The hall was a long building, with an apse at each end, and a gallery running all the way round. In this gallery were bookcases, and above the cases were ten semi-circular bays, each pierced with a pair of circular windows. These bays, it was suggested, should be painted with scenes from the Arthurian legend, and the roof, as part of the general scheme, was to be decorated in a harmonious manner. A building committee was in charge of the operations, and without any clear idea of its responsibilities or restrictions it fell in with Rossetti's proposal that he and a select band of artists should execute the work gratuitously, but that the Union should defray their expenses at Oxford and should provide all necessary materials. The time estimated for completing the work was six weeks. Seven artists, including Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris, were enlisted without much trouble, the remaining four being Arthur Hughes, Spencer Stanhope, Val Prinsep, and J. Hungerford Pollen, who had already won much credit from his painting of the roof in Merton College Chapel. Rossetti took as subjects for two bays _Launcelot asleep before the Chapel of the Sanc Grael_ and _Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival receiving the Sanc Grael_. The others chose similar themes, but in a short time it was found that the work in hand was considerably more than had been anticipated, though abundant evidence remains of the enthusiasm which was put into it.

Unfortunately the delight was not to be of long duration. Almost before the pictures were finished they had begun to decay, the effect of tempera laid direct upon a new brick wall, with no preparation but a layer of whitewash, being quite inadequate to resist the English climate. Several of the designs were never completed. In 1859 some arrangement was entered into by the Union with a Mr. Riviere to fill the three blank compartments; and after that the ill-fated undertaking, on which so much pains and so much skill had been spent, gradually faded away and resolved itself into what it is to-day, a dingy blur of colours in which may be distinguished the occasional vague form of an armoured limb or a patch of flowery background.

Rossetti's connection with Oxford, and its intercalation in his work, does not end with the Union paintings. It was destined to furnish him with a more lasting influence--a face that to the end of his life haunted his pictures with an austere and solemn beauty, dominating and transforming all other kinds, so as even to give rise to the suggestion--a shallow and ignorant one, it is true--that he painted but one type of face. It was at the theatre, one night in the summer of 1857, that Rossetti and Burne-Jones found themselves sitting near two youthful Misses Burden, daughters of an Oxford resident, the elder of whom, by her striking features and wealth of dark wavy hair, appealed so forcibly to Rossetti's painter eye that he obtained an introduction in order to ask for sittings. A pen-and-ink head called _Queen Guenevere_, now in the National Gallery at Dublin, and evidently intended to replace the earlier studies done for _Launcelot at the Shrine_, was one of the first fruits of this acquaintance, which, for the rest, does not seem to have become really prolific of results until several years later, when Rossetti's wife was dead. In the meantime William Morris, whose admiration went even further, had married Miss Burden, and the casual relationship of painter and sitter which existed between her and Rossetti deepened into a friendship, in which Miss Siddal participated, both up to and after her marriage.