| Method | Photogravure |
| Artist | after Dante Gabriel Rossetti |
| Published | The Art Journal, London. H. Vertue & Co. Ltd. c.1895 |
| Dimensions | Image 207 x 182 mm, Sheet 321 x 240 mm |
| Notes |
Inscription beneath title reads: Painted by D.G. Rossetti. From the Picture in the Collection of Fairfax Murray Esqr. A photogravure after one of two paintings undertaken by Rosetti on the theme of 'A Christmas Carol,' perhaps inspired by the Christmas poems of his sister, Christina. Christina's most famous Christmas poem, In the Bleak Midwinter, was eventually set to music and became a popular carol during the Edwardian period. In Rossetti's painting, two women comb the long hair of a younger lady who plays a small piano in her lap. The piano is decorated with a nativity, and a tile on the wall next to her patterned chair features the artist's signature and an inscription reading 'Xmas 1857-8'. In the original painting, the young woman's vibrant red dress is bordered by the green gowns of her attendants. A gold crown sits on the shelf above her head. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882) was a famed British painter and poet. He was born in London. His father, a political exile from the Kingdom of Naples, was a poet; a Dante Alighieri scholar, and from 1831, the Professor of Italian at King's College, London. Dante Gabriel Rossetti entered Henry Sass's Drawing Academy in 1841, and by 1845, was a full student of the Royal Academy Schools. In August 1848, he moved with William Holman Hunt to a studio in Cleveland Street and around September of the same year, founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with the aforementioned Hunt as well as John Everett Millais. He was as adept in writing as he was in painting and was largely responsible for the Pre-Raphaelite magazine The Germ, published in 1850. He was a prolific poet, as well as a translator of early Italian Masters, most of which were published in 1861. The sweeping and languid forms of the women he painted in the 1860's became something of an archetype for the Pre-Raphaelite canon. Unfortunately for Rossetti, his decline was as meteoric as his rise. His mental deterioration was accelerated by neurasthenia, insomnia, a chloral hydrate dependency and a form of persecution mania. He spent long periods of reclusion at Jane and William Morris's Kelmscott Manor, and eventually succumbed to chronic nephritis in 1882. |
| Framing | mounted |
| Price | £150.00 |
| Stock ID | 52206 |