Chapter VII Settling at Chelsea. Work, 1863 to 1874
After the tragic death of his wife, on February 11th, 1862, Rossetti could no longer bear to occupy the rooms they had inhabited at Chatham Place, and began to seek for others. In the meantime he took lodgings for a few months in a house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He had a fancy for getting away from the crowd of London, and yet for being near the river, which caused him to examine one or two old houses in the then by no means fashionable neighbourhoods of Hammersmith and Chelsea. He finally decided in favour of No. 16, Cheyne Walk, a house which from some traditional association with Queen Elizabeth became known as Tudor House and is now called Queen’s House. It is also said to have been described by Thackeray in “Esmond” as the home of the old Countess of Chelsey. Here he started a joint ménage with Mr. Swinburne, Mr. George Meredith, and (at casual intervals) his brother. Mr. Meredith’s subtenancy was not of long duration; in point of fact he never really occupied his rooms. But Mr. Swinburne remained long enough to have shared very considerably the traditions which soon grew up round Tudor House, and whilst there wrote the most famous of his dramas, “Atalanta in Calydon,” as well as many of the “Poems and Ballads,” and a portion of “Chastelard.” The gloom which at first had threatened Rossetti gradually wore away before the robustness of his nature; settling into and furnishing his house on new, and at that time practically unheard-of, principles, afforded abundant distraction; and for some years, until his own illness intervened, Rossetti played the genial and charming host to many old friends of his intimate group, and to an increasing circle of new ones who were attracted by sympathy or by the growing glamour of his name.
One of the charms of the house at Chelsea was its long garden, more than an acre in extent, with an avenue of trees on to which the studio looked. As time went on this garden became tenanted with a miscellaneous assortment of birds and animals, round which a veritable saga of anecdote has gathered. These, with his affection for bric-à-brac, his spontaneous generosity, his ever-ready wit, his love of good stories, and his endless flow of vers d’esprit, form a contrast to the somewhat sombre atmosphere in which he sought his inspirations, and in which, owing to the seclusion of his later years, he was popularly supposed to live.
To resume the thread of Rossetti’s work, the well-known picture of Beata Beatrix, now in the National Collection, bears date 1863, but was only partially painted in that year, the completion being long delayed. One reason for the difficulty may have been that Rossetti desired to make this picture a living memorial of his wife, and that no regular studies of the face had been done for it. What he felt about it we may gather from the fact that for some years he refused to send out a replica, even when replicas had become a regular and lucrative form of business. In the end, however, he was prevailed upon to paint more than one repetition of the subject, none however equal in quality to the original.
To 1863 belongs a small oil picture called Helen of Troy, a full-faced study, head and shoulders only, of a rather pretty model, with masses of rippling yellow hair. The last of the St. George subjects also belongs to this year, and represents St. George in the act of slaying the dragon; a water-colour version of one of the incidents in a series designed for windows, but treated a little differently. Next come three small subjects: Belcolore, a very finely painted head of a girl biting a rosebud; Brimfull, a water-colour sketch of a lady stooping to sip from a glass; and thirdly, a picture called A Lady in Yellow, belonging to Mr. Beresford Heaton. We are now entering upon the period when Rossetti ceased to paint small heads and began to devote himself to larger single figure subjects, lavishing upon them the wealth of his fine imagination, and surrounding them with quaint and beautiful accessories such as he alone knew how to select. The first picture of this type, and in point of execution one of the very finest, is Fazio’s Mistress, a small oil painting dated 1863, but considerably altered ten years later, when Rossetti renamed it Aurelia.
The year 1864 contains two or three more prominent examples of Rossetti’s attraction towards a luxuriant and seductive type of feminine beauty. The most important is Lady Lilith, which embodies perhaps the fullest expression of Rossetti’s power in this direction. Adam’s mythical first wife is shown as a beautiful woman leaning back on a couch combing her long fair hair, while with cold dispassionateness she surveys her features in a hand mirror. “Body’s Beauty” Rossetti called the picture afterwards, contrasting it with his conception of “Soul’s Beauty,” the Sibylla Palmifera of 1866-70.
Still in the same vein—of “Women and Flowers”—is the next great picture begun in 1864, the Venus Verticordia. The principal version of this, an oil painting, was not finished until some time in 1868. The earliest in point of date is a little water-colour commissioned as a replica, which was delivered during the year. The picture represents the goddess of beauty undraped and standing in a bower of clustering honeysuckle which hides her to the waist. In her left hand she holds an apple, in her right a dart upon which is poised a sulphur butterfly. Others are hovering round. Behind is the grove of Venus, and a blue bird winging its way through space.
The remaining productions of 1864 are all in water-colour. They include Morning Music, Monna Pomona, Sir Galahad, Sir Bors, and Sir Percival—belonging to Rossetti’s earlier manner; Roman de la Rose, and The Madness of Ophelia, a scene representing Laertes leading Ophelia away, whilst the king and queen are looking on.
In 1865 was painted the Blue Bower, a picture of the Lilith group, done from the Lilith model, and representing in a setting of gorgeous blue and green harmonies a woman playing upon a dulcimer. The Merciless Lady, which was painted in 1865, is a return to Rossetti’s early romantic compositions, and is a particularly charming specimen. Nor was it his only water-colour of this year, though indisputably the best. For Mr. Craven he painted the subject called Washing Hands—with the exception of Dr. Johnson at the Mitre, his one experiment in (eighteenth century costume.
Another called A Fight for a Woman, is one of Rossetti’s most spirited drawings. In point of invention this design goes back to very early days, as is proved by the existence of tentative sketches dating from about 1853. To the same date belongs the oil painting called originally Bella e Buona, but renamed by Rossetti Il Ramoscello in 1873, when it was taken back by him for retouching. It is a half-length figure, dressed in slate green, and holding an acorn branch.
We now come to one of the most beautiful pictures, if not the most beautiful, that Rossetti ever painted—The Beloved. No one who has not seen it, with a warm sunlight bringing out its colour, can form the most remote conception of its brilliance. “I mean it to be like jewels,” wrote Rossetti to its late owner, Mr. Rae; and jewel-like it flashes. The picture itself is described in a later chapter, amongst those selected for illustration.
In 1866, the year in which the Beloved was finished, Rossetti started upon a second great picture of the same type, the Monna Vanna, a three-quarter length figure draped in magnificent gold and white brocade, and toying with a large fan. This was commissioned by Mr. Rae, as was also Sibylla Palmifera, the third of the series, begun about the same time but not completed until 1870. Rossetti’s sonnet entitled “Soul’s Beauty” describes the subject—a Sibyl seated on a throne and bearing a branch of palm.
The record of 1866 closes with an oil portrait of the painter’s mother, towards whom at all periods of his life his devotion was exemplary; a large crayon drawing of Christina Rossetti, with her thoughtful face resting on her hands; and two designs for her second volume of poems, “The Prince’s Progress.”
In 1867 Rossetti painted the oil Christmas Carol for Mr. Rae, an entirely different subject from the early water-colour. This is a half-length figure of a girl, draped in a gold and purple robe of Eastern stuff, and playing upon a species of lute. Two small but pretty pictures of the same date are Joli Cœur and Monna Rosa. The first represents a coy-looking maiden fingering her necklace, whilst Monna Rosa is chiefly a study in beautiful colour, representing a lady in a dress of pale emerald green, with golden fruit worked upon it, plucking a rose from a tree planted in a blue jar.
The next item of 1867 is the exquisite Loving Cup. The subject is a lady raising a golden cup to her lips, and standing against a background of fair embroidered linen, surmounted by a row of heavy brazen plates.
The year 1868 was cut into by Rossetti’s breakdown in health and sudden anxiety about his eyesight. Nevertheless, he painted the portrait of Mrs. William Morris, in a blue dress, seated at a table before a glass of flowers, which many competent judges regard as one of his very finest pictures, and which was the prelude to that long series of noble canvases by which he has become best known to the public. Mrs. Morris has lent her portrait to the National Gallery, where it hangs (at Millbank) beside the Ecce Ancilla and the Beata Beatrix. Other productions of the same year, which closes the period of Rossetti’s best work, were Bionda del Balcone; Aurea Catena, a fine drawing of Mrs. Morris; two studies for a future picture, La Pia, and some small replicas of no particular importance.
The insomnia which began to attack Rossetti in his thirty-ninth year, and which was the indirect cause of his subsequent breakdown, led him in 1869 to drop work for a time and to take a holiday at Penkill Castle in Ayrshire, the residence of an old friend. The visit is of interest, because it was not until this occasion that he gave a serious thought to the publishing of his early poems, some of which were still going about in manuscript in a more or less finished condition, though others were buried in his wife’s grave. As a relief from the strain of painting, moreover, he began to write again. His first idea was to have the poems, such of them as he could collect or recall from memory, set up in type to keep by him as a nucleus for a possible volume; gradually, however, the idea of publishing outright grew or was forced upon him; and the last obstacle to this, the loss of so much of his early work, was finally removed one day in October, 1869, when, after a consent wrung from him very reluctantly, the grave was opened, and the manuscript poems recovered. In 1870 the book appeared, having as publisher Mr. F S. Ellis, of King Street, Covent Garden. The poems proved an immediate and lucrative success, and were favourably reviewed except for the single attack made upon them in a pseudonymous article by the late Mr. Buchanan. The effect of even one attack, however, and it was admittedly a very unfair and bitter attack, on a man of Rossetti’s temperament, suffering from nervous fancies, and troubled by want of sleep, was disastrous. He viewed as a great conspiracy against him what other men, in sounder health, would have been able to disregard, and the effect was unhappily permanent. He had begun to acquire the habit of taking chloral as a cure for sleeplessness, without knowing, what is well known now, its lamentable after-effect, and for a short time, if one may accept his brother’s judgment, Rossetti was hardly to be regarded as sane. A severe breakdown caused him to be removed once more to Scotland, where after a complete rest he was enabled to resume painting, and in September, 1872, he joined with Mr. and Mrs. Morris in taking the old Elizabethan Manor House of Kelmscott, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. His work here consisted to a large extent in repainting many of his old pictures, which he had sent to him for the purpose. In this way he worked upon the Lilith, Beloved, Monna Vanna, and other important canvases, including even the little early Ecce Ancilla Domini. Rossetti left Kelmscott in July, 1874, and returned to London; and that was the end of his connection with the quiet Gloucestershire retreat, which thenceforward became associated solely with the life of William Morris.
During the years 1869 to 1871, and the two following which Rossetti spent at Kelmscott, he was at work on a number of fairly important new canvases in addition to the retouching of old ones. A sprinkling of crayons and small pictures also has to be mentioned. These include the Rosa Triplex, a study of three heads from one sitter, now in the Tate Gallery, and Penelope, a crayon drawing of a seated figure, which is unique in the respect that it was done from a favourite model of Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
Throughout the year 1870, with one or two exceptions, Mrs. Morris’s is the face which figures in Rossetti’s work. It is to be seen, for instance, in the fine picture called Mariana, really a first attempt at the portrait in the Tate Gallery lent by Mrs. Morris, to which a second figure was subsequently added.
In 1871 he painted the picture of Pandora, of which Mr. Swinburne says, in his “Essays and Studies,” that “it is amongst the mightiest of all Rossetti’s works in its God-like terror and imperial trouble of beauty.” The figure is clad in a long robe of Venetian red, and is holding the fateful casket, from which issues a red smoke, curling all round into clustering shapes, like flame-winged seraph curses. Water-willow, a little quarter-length figure with a river landscape behind, done in the same year, is interesting from the fact that it is a portrait of Mrs. Morris, and that the view represents Kelmscott.
We now come to the picture of Dante’s Dream, begun in 1870 and finished towards the close of 1871, Rossetti’s most important work in the opinion of many people, and considerably his largest. The subject is that of the little early water-colour painted in 1856, namely the vision related by Dante as having come to him of Beatrice lying in death, and the angels bearing upward her soul in the form of “an exceedingly white cloud.” The picture is more fully described elsewhere.
Impressive as Dante’s Dream may be, it is not to be classed on all grounds with Rossetti’s finest work. Yet it has been the object of boundless admiration. It has even been said that if no other of Rossetti’s works survived but this and the Beata Beatrix, they alone would be enough to ensure him a place among the few great artists of the world.
The next great subject in point of date, namely Proserpine, has a complicated history attached to it. Rossetti began the picture upon canvas four times in 1872, with ill-success. He took it up again in 1873 and painted a fine version which was spoilt in straining. This was replaced in the same year by a second fine one which arrived at its destination damaged by an accident in transit. A third large picture had therefore to be painted in 1874, which still exists, and finally the damaged picture was patched and partially repainted in 1877, which is the date it bears in the corner. This is the finest and best known version, and is the one of which an autotype reproduction has been published. There are sundry other replicas and crayon studies of the subject which have not been mentioned, but of the earlier attempts nothing now seems to be left in the form of pictures, the canvases having been cut down into the form of single heads. In all these pictures the subject is the same. The ravished bride of Pluto is seen standing in a corridor of Hades, lighted by a bluish subterranean light, and holding in one hand the pomegranate of which she ate one fatal seed that bound her for ever to her destiny. In none of the pictures done from Mrs. Morris do we find so appropriate the distant air of melancholy with which the painter contrived to invest her features.
Of the other pictures painted at Kelmscott perhaps the most successful is Veronica Veronese, supposed to be taken from a passage in the letters of Girolamo Ridolfi, which describes how a lady, after listening to the notes of a bird, tries to commit them to paper, and finally to reproduce them on her violin. In the picture the Lady Veronica is robed in a rich gown of Rossetti’s favourite green, with yellow daffodils in a glass beside her. The bird, a canary, is perched on a cage above her. She sits at a cabinet, on which is a sheet with the musical notes she has been writing down; and listening with dreamy blue eyes to the bird’s song she lets her thumb wander over the strings of the violin suspended on the wall before her.
Before leaving the year 1872 there is a minor but interesting episode to record. In this year Rossetti took up an old background of trees and foliage which he had painted in 1850, in his Pre-Raphaelite days, when studying with Holman Hunt at Knole Park, near Sevenoaks. Nothing had ever been done to it since; but now Rossetti painted in two women playing instruments and a group of dancing figures, for which very charming crayon studies were made, and called it The Bower Meadow. This interesting combination of early and late styles now belongs to Sir J. D. Milburn, of Newcastle.
La Ghirlandata, the next great oil picture by Rossetti, is dated 1873, and is one of those which has already crossed the Atlantic to the bourne whence works of art but seldom return. The picture represents a lady playing upon a garlanded harp, in the midst of a forest clearing, where angel faces peer down upon her, and mystical blue birds cleave the air. The whole is a subtle blending of subdued colour, where blue and green strive for the mastery. Beautiful as it is in these respects, La Ghirlandata lacks the invention and the interest of Rossetti’s more vigorous early work.
The Damsel of the Sanc Grael, painted in 1874 for Mr. Rae, is a very different picture from the little water-colour of 1856-7. There was a simplicity and primitiveness about the latter which accorded well with the mediaeval sanctity surrounding the subject. When Rossetti came to paint the picture again in his later manner, he represented the austere damsel of the holy mysteries as a handsome girl with flowing chestnut hair, bright lips, and languishing eyes, sumptuously robed in a red gown with a heavily-flowered mantle. In painting this picture Rossetti probably did not seek much beyond mere beauty of form and decoration, in the attainment of which he has succeeded perfectly; and the same may be said in part of a better-known production of the same year, the much-praised Roman Widow, which represents a lady seated by the marble tomb of her husband. A large unfinished canvas, painted simply in grisaille, called The Boat of Love, was begun at this time but abandoned in 1881. After Rossetti’s death it was bought for the Birmingham Corporation Art Gallery, where it is now exhibited. It may be mentioned that the Birmingham Gallery possesses an unequalled collection of Rossetti’s drawings, recently acquired (1906) through the munificence of two or three local donors.
One other subject dated 1874 is intimately bound up with Kelmscott. This is an oil picture called by a variety of names—Marigolds, Fleurs de Marie, The Gardener’s Daughter, etc., but representing in actual fact a young girl standing in a room, and reaching up to place a mass of yellow marigolds and lilies in a flower vase upon a high cabinet of inlaid wood. The model is said to have been the gardener’s daughter at Kelmscott, not that the detail signifies, except as connecting the picture with the place.