ART.
ROSSETTI AT BURLINGTON HOUSE. [srcorrn nouns.] IN our first article upon those works of Rossetti which are exhi- bited in this gallery, we scarcely did more than glance at some of the painter's most marked characteristics ; in this second.
notice, we shall say a few words upon some of the most notable pictures, though we must premise that, as the majority of these are but single figures of womenâand what is more, figures of the same womanâthere is little scope for descriptive writing. These pictures and water-colour drawings fall into three clear sets, according to the period at which they were painted. The first includes all the artist's early work, and may be said to end with the year 1855, the second extends from that date to 1873, the third from 1873 to the date of his death.
Of this first period, there are few examples here ; but at the Burlington Fine-Arts Club, in Savile Row, there is now open another exhibition of Rossetti's pictures, in which many examples of this time can be seen, and those who are really interested in the painter's work should take care to pay a visit to this gallery. It was not, according to the Royal Academy catalogue, till 1849 that the artist painted his first oil picture, which is ex- hibited here, under the title of "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin ;" but previous to that period he had worked considerably in water-colours, and for some time subsequently his chief attention was given to the latter medium. With the excep- tion of two or three small water-colours, the examples of this period at Burlington House are confined to the above- named picture of the Virgin's girlhood (286), and it is worth some little attention. Two matters strike the spectator at once with regard to this work, one being a mental, the other a tech- nical attribute. Let us take the mental quality first. The picture is naĂŻve to a high degree ; it is possessed of all the bland simplicity (if we may use such a term) that marks very early Italian painting ; and in it the real and the symbolical facts of the case twine, as it were, in and out of one another. The Virgin and Sta. Anna are seated beneath a vine, with a pile of books before them, and on the books a flowering lily, "which a little angel with rose-coloured wings is watering," a palm branch and a briar lie near the books ; whilst in the back- ground is St. Joachim trimming the vine; a dove, surrounded by a halo, typifying the Holy Ghost ; and beyond all, a distant landscape, seen through the trellis-work of the balcony. Such is a statement of the bare facts of the picture, and it is sufficient to show that even at this early time Mr. Rossetti's mind evinced that liking for the combination of the natural and the super- natural, the physical and the spiritual, which determined the character of his work to the latest hour of his life. It is worth noting, too, that with all its simplicity of state- ment, notwithstanding that the story of the picture is chiefly told with conventional symbols, and helped out with explanatory scrolls and inscriptions, yet the result of the whole is rather elaborate. As Rasselas started on a search for happiness, Mr. Rossetti seems in this earliest work to have gone a long journey in search of simplicity, and to have some- how lost its substance, while grasping its shadow. The technical character of the picture is a certain clear, clean thinness of colouring and conventionalism of draughtsmanship very difficult to describe. The tints used, though not discordant, are a little crude and sharp. The vine-leaves almost set the teeth on edge, and throughout the Work we see the hand of a man who loves colour, but who as yet hardly knows how to procure it. The drawing, too, is peculiar, rigidly executed, and showing either unwillingness or incapacity to enter into any subtleties of form. It is ascetic in character, and the whole picture might have been designed as an illustration to a fourteenth-century missal. It is a strange question, and one which has never been at all satisfactorily dealt with, how it is that an artist becomes a great colourist ? And one of the difficulties of the matter lies in the fact that there is little analogy to be traced between the early works of those who have subsequently become famous in this line. But in the case of Mr. Rossetti, this difficulty can hardly be said to exist. From the first, it is evident both in his pictures and in his water-colour drawings that colour was what he wanted, and what he would have. It might have been confidently predicted by any ordinarily capable judge of Art, that a young man who could deal sa.boldly and frankly with pure colour as did Rossetti in his early work was absolutely certain to master its secrets. For the one thing which the history of painting proves is that those artists who cared much about pure colour have always been capable of giving its glory to their pictures, and this in no proportion to their amount of scientific knowledge. However, this is not the place to discuss such a question. All we wish to point out in this connection is, that according to a painter's aim will be his success. If in his pupillage he aims at harmony of effect in secondary and tertiary tints, if, to give a technical instance, he bases his picturs of the world's beauty upon indigo, light red, and yellow ochre, then it is a thousand to one that he never becomes a great colourist. But if he works, however feebly, with the whole scale of tints, if he accepts vermilion, and lake, and ultra- marine, and chrome, and all their vivid combinations, then, supposing him to have the stuff in him of which great painters are made, he is on the right track to become a great colourist. His crudity and garishness will soon disappear, his brilliant hues will become soft as well as spark- ling, deep as well as bright ; and when he reaches his height of power, he will show us, as does Rossetti in his completed work, colouring which has the lustre of the emerald and the sapphire, rather than the gradations of a muddy road, or the dirty harmonies of a turbid river.
In speaking of the second period, we are beset by the opposite difficulty to that under which we laboured in consider-
ing the first. There is, indeed, an embarras de richesses of examples, and where all are so fine, the difficulty of selection becomes almost insuperable. We shall in the main con- fine our remarks to two pictures, not asserting that they are the best, but only that they afford more opportunity for criticism than most of the others. These are the large picture of " Dante's Dream," and the half-length which is entitled "Monne Vanua" (302). Taking it from a painter's point of view, this latter picture is probably the finest piece of work which Mr. Rossetti ever executed ; and it was done about his finest period, 1866. It is a seated figure of a very beautiful woman, in a dress of heavy, white silk, embroidered with gold. She holds a fan in her hand, and is twining some coral beads round her fingers. It is easy to see wherein much of the merit of this picture lies, for its lovely colour and the power with which it is painted are visible to all ; but the chasm which separates it from an ordinary half-length portrait is excessively deep, as well as wide, and is difficult to fathom. That extraordinary quality of dignity which strikes most people in the portraits of the Venetian masters, is per- haps at the root of this picture's greatness ; it has all the luxury, the pride of life, the sumptuousness, and the largeness of conception of an old Italian painting. This woman is not an English model, but a lady of Venice or Rome, born to an inheritance of splendour. There are just two or three similar works here in which Rossetti's hand seems to have been satisfied with something purely beautiful, and has created it, without troubling its fair surface with the regret and pain that look at us out of most of his women's eyes. The pic- ture of "The Beloved" (297), an illustration to Solomon's Song, is one instance of this, and "The Blue Bower" is another; both pictures glorious with such colour as has rarely been painted in the world, both free from care, or thought of any- thing but beauty. And it is noticeable that in all these three pictures the physical type of beauty which, as a rule, usurped Rossetti's pencil, is, if not absent, at all events kept in abeyance. As painting, too, in the technical sense of the word, we can scarcely ask for finer work than is to be found in these examples. Not to enter into details, look, for an example of this, at the treatment of the flesh in the " Monne, Vanna," at the magnificently broad and yet delicate manner in which the gold embroideries are in- troduced, at the painting of the coral necklace and the heart- shaped crystal which hang round the lady's neck. This last is one of the most perfect pieces of technical dexterity attained by legitimate means which we ever remember to have seen in oil-painting. The crystal is a thick, heart-shaped one, set in a gold rim, and in the picture we can look down through ita clear depths till our eye reaches the flesh beneath. A little- thing this, perhaps, to mention, but it has its value when we consider that many artists choose to assert that, in the technical sense, Rossetti could not paint at all.
With regard to the " Dante's Dream," the one large picture of Rossetti's life, and into which he threw all his power, it is impossible, in our limited space, to speak adequately. It repre- sents Love leading Dante into the chamber of Beatrice, to kiss. her after her death, and the description given in the Academy catalogue describes the treatment of the subject so well, that we refer our readers thereto. The picture is said therein to be painted in 1870, and it marks, perhaps, the latest work of Rossetti's best period. In truth, grand as it is in conception, it is in some ways defective on its technical side. For, in the first place, though the colour is fine and harmonious to a high
-degree, it is not splendid, as in the pi3tures of which we have been speaking, nor is the painting equally good throughout. A coarseness of flesh-painting which grew upon Rossetti in the later years of his life is evident here, especially in the out- stretched arm of the figure of Love, in which the brush-work is hard and rough, like badly planed wood; and portions of the drawing, as, again, for instance, in this arm, are both poor and awkward. Another sign of the painter's decline in power may 'be seen in his treatment of Beatrice's hair, which is of a dull flaxeny-red hue, both unpleasant and unnatural in colour. It is curious to note that this painting of hair, which was once one of the artist's strongest points, became ere the close of his life one of his weakest, and that in the later pictures, amongst many other fallings-off, not one is so noticeable as the ugly colour and exaggerated heaviness of the masses of hair round -the faces of the women. But to return to " Dante's Dream." If it has one or two grave drawbacks, its merits are far more -valuable. It is, as we heard a lady say in the room, an "in- carnate poem," full of many varieties of tender meaning, and offering a dozen interpretations to all who choose -to think. The great mental triumph of the picture is in the face and figure of Dante, which express the mean- ing of the picture very perfectly. Technically, the work, -despite one or two shortcomings, is entitled to rank with -the great pictures of the world ; and it is notable that -herein Rossetti has succeeded just where it might be thought lie would have failed,âwe mean in the composition. There is not a trace here of that hurried, over-crowded combina- -tion of figures and accessories which marks a great portion of -this artist's work. On the contrary, his large canvas is only --just adequately filled, and the figures are rather scattered than -crowded. The colour, as we have said, is fine, but not such as -the " Monna Vanna " or "The Beloved" possess ; perhaps the painter thought that for this sad scene ofdreams, such colour would be inappropriate, but we fear it was rather the beginning of his decline. What that decline led him to may be traced, for all who care to follow the steps of decaying power, in the pictures -of "The Day-dream" and "The Roman Widow," in which last work nearly all the power and beauty of the painter have faded, and only left a sad reflection of his genius. But through this period of decline we do not care to follow him, nor is he fairly to be judged thereby. His best work will be that which deter- mines his fame, and of this we say again that in beauty of -colour and poetical inspiration, the world has as yet never seen its equal.
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