Chapter VI Work From 1858 to 1862
The year 1858, while the Oxford affair was still in train, saw the completion of two pen-and-ink drawings which had been in hand a long time. These were Hamlet and Ophelia and Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee.
The drawing of Mary Magdalene, perhaps the most perfect of all Rossetti’s early works, was begun at least by 1853, and continued to occupy his thoughts in one form or another for many years. Rossetti wrote a sonnet for the picture, which is found in his first volume, called “Poems.”
Another subject finished in 1858 was Mary in the House of John. The scene is at late twilight, or in an eastern night, the red glow of the sky casting a purple light over the clustered dwellings of Nazareth, with deep blue hills beyond. In the interior of the room are Mary and St. John, the latter seated in shadow, engaged in striking light from a flint; whilst Mary, standing before the tall window, fills a hanging lamp from a jar of oil.
Another important item to be recorded under 1858 is a water-colour called Before the Battle, painted for Rossetti’s American friend, Professor Norton, of Harvard.
The most important work of 1859 is a highly-finished little head in oils, called Bocca Baciata, which was bought by the late Mr. Boyce. The model for this was Miss Fanny Cornforth, afterwards Mrs. Schott, whose florid type of beauty reappears in a series of sensuous pictures of the kind that Rossetti began to paint after 1862—Aurelia (Fazio’s Mistress), The Blue Bower, The Lady at her Toilet, Lilith, and The Lady of the Fan. These pictures, and numerous portraits in oil and water-colour, give a sufficiently recognizable idea of this model, who exercised almost as remarkable an influence over Rossetti’s life as over his art.
Bonifazio’s Mistress, a specially charming little water-colour, was painted in 1860. It shows a lady (dressed in the same brightly be-ribanded flounces as Lucretia Borgia wears in the little 1851 group) who has been sitting to her lover, a painter, when suddenly she has fallen back in her chair, dead.
The connection of this subject with the poet, Bonifazio (or Fazio) degli Uberti is entirely fanciful. There can be little doubt that it was intended to illustrate Rossetti’s own story of “St. Agnes of Intercession.” Bonifazio’s Mistress has no connection whatever either in subject or composition with the oil painting of the same name done in 1863, and afterwards re-named Aurelia. The latter is simply a three-quarter length figure of a lady plaiting her hair before a toilet glass.
This (1860) was the year of Rossetti’s marriage, as has already been stated, and in June he was at Paris on his honeymoon. While there he executed two pen-and-ink drawings, one of which was the design of How they met Themselves, done to replace the earlier version of 1851, which had been lost. The other represents a scene from Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” a curious source of inspiration for Rossetti, rendered more remarkable from the fact that the incident chosen is of a humorous and spicy character. Dr. Maxwell told the story how two young women from Staffordshire had come up to town to consult Johnson about Methodism, in which they were much interested. “Come,” said he, “you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject”; which they did, and after dinner he took one of them on his knee, and fondled her for half-an-hour together.
In 1861 Rossetti’s translations from the Italian poets were at last published, together with the “Vita Nuova.” Rossetti thought out a very charming design of two lovers kissing in a rose-garden, which he proposed to etch on copper for the title-page. The plate, however, displeased him, and he destroyed it. The central idea of this design reappears in Love’s Greeting, a panel designed for the Red House, and in a water-colour of 1864 inscribed Roman de la Rose, in which Love appears overshadowing the kissing pair with his wings.
In 1861 was painted, on a little panel, 10 by 8 inches, a portrait of Mrs. Rossetti, called Regina Cordium or The Queen of Hearts, showing just the head and bare shoulders, on a gold ground, behind a parapet on which rests one hand holding a purple pansy. A more important outcome of the year is the fine composition known as Cassandra. The subject is a scene on the walls of Troy just before Hector’s last battle. Rossetti wrote two sonnets for the drawing which will be found in his volume of “Poems.”
About this time (1861-1862) the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. was just being started, with William Morris, Rossetti, Faulkner, Burne-Jones, Madox Brown, Webb, and others as the active promoters of a venture which was to reform the arts of decoration and furniture making. Tapestry, furniture, wallpapers, stained glass, painted panels, and later on carpet-weaving and dyeing, were among the industries to which this band of highly original artists and designers turned their attention. The Anglo-Catholic movement and the demand for decoration of an aesthetic and sensuous kind gave the new firm plenty to do, amongst their first commissions being the embellishment of two new churches then being built by Bodley, St. Martin’s on the Hill, Scarborough, and St. Michael’s at Brighton. For the former Rossetti executed a design for two pulpit panels and several windows, achieving from the very first a mastery over this branch of art which few designers have surpassed. It is characteristic of his original mind that he went right back to the fundamental principles of vitraux, paying no attention whatever to the elaborations which had grown round them, and recognizing that a picture which was transparent, that is, seen by transmitted light, must be conceived in flat tones and not made to give the illusion of shading, as can be done in the case of a surface from which the light is reflected.
The Paolo and Francesca water-colour is generally attributed to the year 1861, although no particular authority exists for this beyond an auctioneer’s catalogue. This beautiful little water-colour represents the first compartment of the double subject. In it Paolo and Francesca are seated before a window bearing the arms of Malatesta. Outside is a bright and sunny landscape. The lovers have stopped in the midst of their reading to give the fatal kiss that sealed their doom.
In 1861 or 1862 Rossetti designed two woodcuts for his sister Christina’s “Goblin Market,” published by Messrs. Macmillan. In 1865 he drew two more designs for “The Prince’s Progress.” The covers for these two little volumes, as well as for his own when they appeared, were designed by Rossetti, and are as original and effective and tasteful as his decorative work invariably was.