Pre-Raphaelitism -- Great Britain; Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 1828-1882
_The Day Dream_ is a portrait of Mrs. Morris seated in the lower
branches of a sycamore tree. _La Pia_, the last original picture
painted by Rossetti, depicts the story of Pia de' Tolomei, told in
the fifth canto of the "Purgatorio." In Rossetti's canvas she is
seen, sitting forward in a window, gazing out over the poisonous
Maremma from the fortress where her husband had placed her to die.
_Found_, which was one of the first pictures Rossetti attempted, was
never completed. After Rossetti's death, as already mentioned, Sir
Edward Burne-Jones added a little work to it, and in this condition
it was taken over by the purchaser. It is now in America.
With this we come to an end of Rossetti's work as a painter. It
remains briefly to close the record of his life.
In September, 1881, Rossetti, accompanied by Mr. Hall Caine,
undertook an expedition to the lake district of Cumberland; but after
a month his health, which at first had appeared to benefit, became
alarmingly bad, and he returned hurriedly to London. After a partial
recovery from this illness his work was once more interrupted in
December by an attack of nervous paralysis, traceable to the effects
of the drug he had been taking. In February, 1882, he was taken to
Birchington-on-Sea, where a cottage had been placed at his disposal,
and here he died on the 10th of April. He was buried, quietly and
simply, in the little churchyard at Birchington, where a stone
monument has been erected by his family in the form of a Celtic cross
designed by Madox Brown. A memorial window embodying his own early
design of _The Passover_, adapted by Mr. Shields, was also set up in
the adjoining church.
So passed away, in the fifty-fourth year of his life, one of the most
original artists of our time; I will not say one of the greatest
painters, for that would invite controversy as to points in which he
was, and knew himself to be, deficient. But as an artist, as one who
saw, and could interpret and depict beautiful things in a beautiful
way, there can be no two questions about Rossetti's greatness. Never
before has one man blended so perfectly the sister gifts of poetry
and painting that it was impossible to pronounce in which he was
superior.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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