Rossetti, Dante Gabriel

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Paintings

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), English Pre-Raphaelite painter, poet. Rossetti was the son of an Italian political refugee in London. Rossetti was taught drawing by Cotman and after a few unsuccessful months with Ford Madox Brown he went to Holman Hunt in 1848. Under Hunt's guidance he painted his first major work, The Girlhood of Mary Virgin, the first picture exhibited (in March 1849) with the initials of the PRB. His adherence to the tenets of the Brotherhood was, however, very short-lived.

Rossetti's subjects were drawn mostly from Dante and from a medieval dream-world also reflected in his verse, e.g. The Wedding of St George, or Arthur's Tomb. Many of these were highly elaborated watercolors. In 1850 Rossetti met Elizabeth Siddal, who also posed for Hunt and Millais, and from 1852 onwards she developed under his inspiration into an artist of poetic and neurotic intensity. His best work (and poems) was produced during the year of their uneasy association. They married in 1860; in 1862 she died of narcotics and he became virtually a recluse and eventually a chloral addict.

In 1857 Rossetti was concerned in the decoration of the Oxford Union and he did one painting directly on a white-washed wall. It perished immediately. His poor technique and his use of studio assistants are obvious in many of his later works. From the 1860s Elizabeth Siddal's place was taken (as model and inspiration) by Morris's wife Jane, and he painted many versions of the full-lipped sultry beauty which came to be associated with his name.

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