_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. CHAPTER VIII CLOSE OF THE RECORD. 1874-1882