Artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (English, 1828-1882)
Title: Study of a Female Head
Medium: Antique engraving on laid paper after the original drawing by a Master Engraver.
Dimensions: Image Size 8 1/8 x 9 1/2 inches.
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 17 x 19 inches.
Framing: This piece has been professionally framed and matted using all new materials.
The original drawing was one of those left in the artist’s studio at his death, and sold at Messrs, Christie’s. It is obviously a study from life, and the graceful head is drawn in the most simply and unaffected manner. Those who have been disposed to believe that the artist had but one type of face may here find the evidence that Rossetti was able to study with enjoyment a model without full lips, or large eyes, or heavy masses of hair. It is only, indeed, in the drawing of the neck that any trace of mannerism is apparent.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. Rossetti was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, most notably William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His work also influenced the European Symbolists and was 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 John Keats. His later poetry was characterised by the complex interlinking of thought and feeling, especially in his sonnet sequence, The House of Life. Poetry and image are closely entwined in Rossetti’s work. He frequently wrote sonnets to accompany his pictures, spanning from The Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and Astarte Syriaca (1877), while also creating art to illustrate poems such as “Goblin Market” by the celebrated poet Christina Rossetti, his sister. Rossetti’s personal life was closely linked to his work, especially his relationships with his models and muses Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth and Jane Morris.