Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Source

• Born: 12 May 1828
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: 9 April 1882
• Best Known As: Romantic poet and painter of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Name at birth: Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti helped found the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a school of painting (1848) that advocated a return to the Italian style before Raphael. Rossetti was also a well-known romantic poet and was famous for lyric poems such as The Blessed Damozel. His paintings are noted for their luxurious detail and beatific depictions of the feminine.

Rossetti shares a name with, but is unrelated to, the poet Dante Alighieri.

(b London, 12 May 1828; d Birchington on Sea, Kent, 9 April 1882). Painter, designer and poet.

Despite his Italian parentage, Rossetti never visited Italy. An early disposition for drawing and literature led him to illustrate his sister Maria's copy of the Iliad in 1840. Three years later his first poem, 'Sir Hugh the Heron', was privately printed by his maternal grandfather, Gaetano Polidori.

Part of the Rossetti family

See the Abbreviations for further details.

The English painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was a cofounder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. His works show an impassioned, mystic imagination in strong contrast to the banal sentimentality of contemporary Victorian art.

Born on May 12, 1828, of Anglo-Italian parentage, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was steeped throughout childhood in the atmosphere of medieval Italy, which became a major source of his subject matter and artistic inspiration. After 2 years in the Royal Academy schools he worked briefly under Ford Madox Brown in 1848.

Shortly after Rossetti joined William Holman Hunt's studio later that year, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed, in Hunt's words, "to do battle against the frivolous art of the day." An association of artists so varied in artistic style, technique, and expressive spirit as the Pre-Raphaelites could not long survive, and it was principally owing to Rossetti's forceful, almost hypnotic personality that the Brotherhood held together long enough to achieve the critical and popular recognition necessary for the success of its crusade.

His Paintings

Rossetti did not have the natural technical proficiency that is evident in the minute detail and brilliant color of a typical Pre-Raphaelite painting, and his early oil paintings, the Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and the Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), were produced only at the expense of great technical effort. In the less demanding medium of watercolor, however, Rossetti clearly revealed his intense, compressed imaginative power. The series of small watercolors of the 1850s culminates in such masterpieces as Dante's Dream (1856) and the Wedding of St. George and the Princess Sabra (1857), characteristic products of Rossetti's inflamed sensibility, with typically irrational perspective and lighting, glowing color, and forceful figures.

In almost all his paintings of the 1850s Rossetti used Elizabeth Siddal as his model. Discovered in a hatshop in 1850, she was adopted by the Brotherhood as their ideal of feminine beauty. In 1852 she became exclusively Rossetti's model, and in 1860 his wife. Beset by growing melancholy, she committed suicide 2 years later. Rossetti buried a manuscript of his poems in her coffin, a characteristically dramatic gesture which he later regretted. Beata Beatrix (1863), a posthumous portrait of Elizabeth Siddal, the Beatrice to his Dante, is one of Rossetti's most deeply felt paintings: it is his last masterpiece and the first in a series of symbolical female portraits, which declined gradually in quality as his interest in painting decreased.

His Poetry

Although early in his career poetry was for Rossetti simply a relaxation from painting, later on writing gradually became more important to him, and in 1871 he wrote to Ford Madox Brown, "I wish one could live by writing poetry. I think I'd see painting d - - d if I could… ." In 1861 he published his translations from Dante and other early Italian poets, reflecting the medieval preoccupations of his finest paintings. In 1869 the manuscript of his early poems was recovered from his wife's coffin and published the next year.

Rossetti's early poems under strong Pre-Raphaelite influence, such as "The Blessed Damozel" (1850; subsequently revised) and "The Portrait," have a sensitive innocence and a strong mystical passion paralleled by his paintings of the 1850s. As his interest in painting declined, Rossetti's poetic craftsmanship improved, until in his latest works, such as "Rose Mary" and "The White Ship" (both included in Ballads and Sonnets, 1881), his use of richly colored word textures achieves a sumptuous grandeur of expression and sentiment.

At his death on April 9, 1882, Rossetti had reached a position of artistic prominence, and his spirit was a significant influence on the cultural developments of the late 19th century. Although his technique was not always the equal of his powerful feeling, his imaginative genius earned him a place in the ranks of English visionary artists.

Further Reading

The most recent work on Rossetti is G. H. Fleming, Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1967), a detailed study of his relations with the Brotherhood, which like Oswald Doughty's A Victorian Romantic: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1949; 2d ed. 1960) is a general biography, not a specialized work on the paintings. Fundamental on the Pre-Raphaelites is William Holman Hunt's firsthand account, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (2 vols., 1905). Also important are Robin Ironside, Pre-Raphaelite Painters (1948); T. S. R. Boase, English Art, 1800-1870 (1959); and John Dixon Hunt, The Pre-Raphaelite Imagination, 1848-1900 (1968).

Additional Sources

Ash, Russell. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, New York: H.N. Abrams, 1995.

Dobbs, Brian. Dante Gabriel Rossetti: an alien Victorian, London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1977.

Faxon, Alicia Craig. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, New York: Abbeville Press, 1989.

Nicoll, John. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, New York: Macmillan, 1976, 1975.

Waugh, Evelyn. Rossetti, his life and works, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1978.

(click to enlarge)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, photograph by Lewis Carroll, 1863 (credit: The Bettmann Archive)

(born May 12, 1828, London, Eng. — died April 9, 1882, Birchington-on-Sea, Kent) British painter and poet. Son of Gabriele Rossetti and brother of Christina Rossetti, he trained at the Royal Academy but vacillated between painting and poetry. As an informal pupil of Ford Madox Brown, he absorbed Brown's admiration for the German Nazarenes. In 1848, with several friends, he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters treating religious, moral, and medieval subjects in a naturalistic style. Rossetti expanded the Brotherhood's aims by linking poetry, painting, and Social Idealism and by treating "Pre-Raphaelite" as synonymous with a romanticized medieval past. When his oil paintings were severely criticized, he turned to watercolours based on literary works, which he could more easily sell to acquaintances, and became very successful. The group broke up in 1852, but Rossetti revived it in 1856 with Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. After the death of his long-ailing wife in 1862, possibly by suicide, literary themes gave way to pictures of women, particularly Morris's wife, Jane. His poetry, including the sonnet sequence "The House of Life," was widely admired. He broke with Morris in 1875 over his love for Jane and spent his later years as an alcoholic recluse.

For more information on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, visit Britannica.com.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-82). Poet and painter. Rossetti was born in London, the son of an Italian refugee. Taught drawing by Cotman, he also worked with Ford Madox Brown, before coming under the guidance of Holman Hunt in 1848. His first major work, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, was also the first to bear the initials PRB(Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood). He soon moved away from brotherhood principles to follow what Millais called ‘his own peculiar fancies’, his best painting being done during his association with the model Elizabeth Siddal, whom he married in 1860.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828–82), English painter and poet. A founding member of the Pre‐Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848), Rossetti developed a highly personal subject‐matter and symbolism inspired by medieval poetry (particularly Dante). Although his later work was almost entirely devoted to sensuous allegorical images of women, earlier paintings included many subjects from medieval literature, including the Arthurian cycle. Closest in feeling to a fairy tale is ‘The Wedding of St George and Princess Sabra’ (1857); Rossetti gives the legend a magical happy ending in a gold‐and‐crimson chamber, with the dragon's head nearby in a wooden box.

— Suzanne Rahn

English author and painter Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, commonly known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was born in London, May 12, 1828. His father was an Italian who had settled in England.

While yet a boy, Rossetti manifested artistic talent, and accordingly was sent to study drawing under John Sell Cotman, Shortly afterward he entered the Royal Academy Schools. In 1848, he commenced working in the studio of Ford Madox Brown, during which time he began to show himself a painter of distinct individuality, while simultaneously he made his first essays in translating Italian literature into English and became known among his friends as a poet of rare promise.

Meanwhile, however, Rossetti was really more interested in painting rather than writing, and soon after leaving Brown's studio he brought about a memorable event in the history of English painting by founding the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a body consisting of seven members, whose central aim was to render precisely and literally every separate object figured in their pictures. Leaving his father's house in 1849, Rossetti went to live at Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, London, and during the next ten years his activity as a painter was enormous.

The year 1860 was a notable one in his career, as it marked his marriage to Eleanor Siddal. The love between the pair was of an exceptionally passionate order, and from it sprang Rossetti's later sonnet sequence called The House of Life, published in 1881. However, Eleanor died in 1862. The loss of his wife preyed upon him persistently; he was tortured by insomnia and, in consequence, began to take occasional doses of the drug chloral. Gradually this practice developed into a habit, and it soon became evident that his death was imminent unless he gave up his addiction to the drug. He died April 9, 1882, at Birchington, near Margate, and his remains were interred in the cemetery there.

Rossetti had a marked bias for mysticism in various forms. William Bell Scott, in his Autobiographical Notes (2 vols., 1892), told how the poet became at one time much enamored of table-turning. His temperament was undoubtedly a very religious one, and once toward the close of his life he declared that he had "seen and heard those that died long ago."

A belief in the possibility of communicating with the dead may have induced him on his wife's death to have some of his love poems enclosed in her coffin. Whatever the truth of his poems, it is by his painting rather than by his poetry that Rossetti holds a place as a great mystic, for despite his fondness for precise handling, most of his pictures are essentially of a mystical nature. They embody the scenes and incidents beheld in dreams in a manner similar to the work of William Blake.

Quotes:

"Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies? Nay, who but infants question in such wise, 'twas one of my most intimate enemies."

"Love is the last relay and ultimate outposts of eternity."

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti by George Frederic Watts
Born	12 May 1828(1828-05-12) London, England
Died	9 April 1882 (aged 53) Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, England
Occupation	Poet, Illustrator, Painter

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882) was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 and was later to be the main inspiration for second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement. He was also a major precursor of the Aesthetic movement.

Rossetti's art was characterised by its sensuality and its medieval revivalism. His early poetry was influenced by Keats. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence The House of Life.

Rossetti's personal life was closely linked to his work, especially his relationships with his models and muses Elizabeth Siddal and Jane Morris.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Later life and death 4 Media 5 Quotes 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

Early life

The son of émigré Italian scholar Gabriel Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti and his wife Frances Polidori, D.G. Rossetti was born in London, England and originally named Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti. His family and friends called him "Gabriel", but in publications he put the name Dante first (in honour of Dante Alighieri). He was the brother of poet Christina Rossetti, the critic William Michael Rossetti, and author Maria Francesca Rossetti.

Self-portrait, 1847

Like all his siblings, he aspired to be a poet and attended King's College School. However, he also wished to be a painter, having shown a great interest in Medieval Italian art. He studied at Henry Sass's Drawing Academy from 1841 to 1845 when he enrolled at the Antique School of the Royal Academy, leaving in 1848. After leaving the Royal Academy, Rossetti studied under Ford Madox Brown, with whom he was to retain a close relationship throughout his life.

Following the exhibition of William Holman Hunt's painting The Eve of St. Agnes, Rossetti sought out Hunt's friendship. The painting illustrated a poem by the then still little-known John Keats. Rossetti's own poem "The Blessed Damozel" was an imitation of Keats, so he believed that Hunt might share his artistic and literary ideals. Together they developed the philosophy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which they founded along with John Everett Millais. Rossetti was always more interested in the Medieval than in the modern side of the movement. He was publishing translations of Dante and other Medieval Italian poets, and his art also sought to adopt the stylistic characteristics of the early Italians.

In 1850, Rossetti met Elizabeth Siddal, who became an important model for the Pre-Raphaelite painters. They were married in 1860.

Career

Proserpine, (1874).

Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), Tate Britain, London

Beata Beatrix (1864-1870), Tate Britain, London

Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci.

Although he won support from John Ruskin, criticism of his paintings caused Rossetti to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to watercolours, which could be sold privately.

In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syriaca". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices.

Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix.

These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his alleged mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.

Later life and death

During this time, Rossetti acquired an obsession for exotic animals, and in particular wombats. He would frequently ask friends to meet him at the "Wombat's Lair" at the London Zoo in Regent's Park, and would spend hours there himself. Finally, in September 1869, he was to acquire the first of two pet wombats. This short-lived wombat, named "Top", was often brought to the dinner table and allowed to sleep in the large centrepiece of the dinner table during meals. This fascination with exotic animals continued throughout Rossettis' life, finally culminating in the purchase of a llama and a Toucan which Rossetti would dress in a cowboy hat and persuade it to ride the llama round the dining table for his amusement.^[1]

A Vision of Fiammetta (1878), one of Rossetti's last paintings, is now in the collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

During these years, Rossetti was prevailed upon by friends, in particular Charles Augustus Howell, to exhume his poems from his wife's grave. This he did, collating and publishing them in 1870 in the volume Poems by D. G. Rossetti. They created a controversy when they were attacked as the epitome of the "fleshly school of poetry". The eroticism and sensuality of the poems caused offence. One poem, "Nuptial Sleep", described a couple falling asleep after sex. This was part of Rossetti's sonnet sequence The House of Life, a complex series of poems tracing the physical and spiritual development of an intimate relationship. Rossetti described the sonnet form as a "moment's monument", implying that it sought to contain the feelings of a fleeting moment, and to reflect upon their meaning. The House of Life was a series of interacting monuments to these moments — an elaborate whole made from a mosaic of intensely described fragments. This was Rossetti's most substantial literary achievement.

In 1881, Rossetti published a second volume of poems, Ballads and Sonnets, which included the remaining sonnets from the The House of Life sequence.

Toward the end of his life, Rossetti sank into a morbid state, darkened by his drug addiction to chloral and increasing mental instability, possibly worsened by his reaction to the savage critical attacks on his disinterred (1869) poetry from the manuscript poems he had buried with his wife. He spent his last years as a recluse.

On Easter Sunday, 1882, he died at the country house of a friend, where he had gone in yet another vain attempt to recover his health, which had been destroyed by chloral as his wife's had been destroyed by laudanum. He is buried at Birchington-on-Sea, Kent, England. His grave is visited regularly by admirers of his life's work and achievements and this can be seen by fresh flowers placed there regularly.

Media

Rossetti was played by Oliver Reed in Ken Russell's film Dante's Inferno (1967). The PRB as a whole have been the subjects of two BBC period dramas. The first, entitled The Love School, was shown in 1975, starring Ben Kingsley as Rossetti. The second was Desperate Romantics, in which Rossetti is played by Aidan Turner. It was first broadcast on BBC 2 Tuesday, 21 July 2009.^[2]

Quotes

• "The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank."^[3]

See also

• List of paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• Category:Dante Gabriel Rossetti paintings
• English art
• James Smetham
• Rossetti-Polidori family tree
• Rossetti and His Circle by Max Beerbohm

References

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2009)

1. ^ National Library of Australia
2. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2008/08_august/07/romantics.shtml
3. ^ Rossetti quote at Quotations Page

Further reading

• Treuherz, J., Prettejohn, E., Becker, E., & Rossetti, D. G. (2003). Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Thames & Hudson.
• Rossetti, D. G., & Marsh, J. (2000). Collected writings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Chicago: New Amsterdam Books.
• McGann, J. J. (2000). Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the game that must be lost. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Ash, Russell. (1995). Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London: Pavilion Books ISBN 978-1857934120; New York: H.N. Abrams ISBN 978-1857939507.
• The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Vol. 1, 4 & 5 by William Fredeman^{[citation needed]}
• Fredeman, W. E. (1971). Prelude to the last decade: Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the summer of 1872. Manchester [Eng.]: The John Rylands Library.
• Simons, J. (2008). Rossetti's Wombat: Pre-Raphaelites and Australian animals in Victorian London. London: Middlesex University Press.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

• The Rossetti Archive -- Online scholarly archive of Rossetti's works, including text, manuscripts, paintings, etc.
• Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource Large online collection of the works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
• ArtRenewal.org gallery
• Works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti at Project Gutenberg
  • Project Gutenberg e-text of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The House Of Life
• Ten Dreams Galleries
• Major Rossetti exhibition with nearly 200 works
• Website about Rossetti's wife, Elizabeth Siddal
• Rossetti in the "History of Art"
• "The Day Dream". Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/10019-popup.html. Retrieved 2007-11-19. 
• The Pre-Raph Pack Discover more about the artists, the techniques they used and a timeline spanning 100 years.
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti at WikiGallery.org

Persondata
NAME	Rossetti, Dante Gabriel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet
DATE OF BIRTH	12 May 1828
PLACE OF BIRTH	London
DATE OF DEATH	9 April 1882
PLACE OF DEATH	Birchington-on-Sea, Kent

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