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Updated: July 3, 2025
Dante Gabriel Rossetti once showed Whistler a sketch and asked his opinion of its merits. "It has good points, Rossetti," said Whistler. "Go ahead with it by all means." Later he inquired how it was getting along. "All right," answered Rossetti, cheerfully. "I've ordered a stunning frame for it." In due time the canvas appeared at Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk, beautifully framed.
Meynell's John Ruskin; Sizeranne's Ruskin and the Religion of Beauty, translated from the French; White's Principles of Art; W. M. Rossetti's Ruskin, Rossetti, and Pre-Raphaelitism. Macaulay. Criticism: Essays, by Bagehot, in Literary Studies; by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Saintsbury, in Corrected Impressions; by Harrison, in Studies in Early Victorian Literature; by Matthew Arnold.
Surely the Rossettis had no diamonds when they lived here. But Mr. Dixon had a diamond and with his ring he cut beneath the word just noted the name, "Dante Gabriel Rossetti." I have recently heard that the signature has been identified as authentic by a man who was familiar with Rossetti's handwriting.
Far off the trees were as pale wands, Against the fervid sky: the sea Sighed further off eternally As human sorrow sighs in sleep. The poem is not a hymn but a decorated theme. And yet there is a sincere vain-longing running through Rossetti's work that keeps it from being artificial or pretentious. This was no less real for being vague.
We have extracted the following items from the diary, quoting exactly, except for the substitution sometimes of the full name for initials: November 7th Monday. "Du Maurier tells of Whistler and Rossetti's rage for old china, and how Rossetti once left his guests at dinner and rushed off to buy a piece before Whistler could forestall him." May 17, 1865.
Passion like this, to paraphrase a line of Rossetti's, is genius; and it arouses in such as look upon it the peculiar sense of wonder and love, of awe-stricken raising up of him who contemplates, which accompanies the contemplation of genius. But it may be that one day we feel, instead of this, wonder indeed, but wonder mingled with doubt.
Such a composition as that of Rossetti's Ancilla Domini, where the Virgin cowers on her bed as the angel floats in with flames round his feet; such a suggestion as that of the unfinished lily on the embroidery frame, was reserved for our sceptical and irreverent, but imaginative times.
Rossetti suppressed one of the best of his sonnets, a sonnet chosen for admiration by Tennyson, himself extremely sensitive about the moral effect of poetry; suppressed it, I believe, because it was called fleshly. One may regret Rossetti's judgment and at the same time respect his scrupulousness; but in any case he judged in his capacity of citizen, not in his capacity of artist.
He records how Rossetti appealed to his friendship in the name of the dead lady's regard for him a regard such as she had felt for no other of Rossetti's friends to cleave to him in this time of sorrow, to come and keep house with him as soon as a residence could be found. Can there be a more convincing and a more beautiful testimony as to a friend's sorrow and its cause?
G. F. Watts's picture, now in the National Portrait Gallery, was never finished, and I never saw upon Rossetti's face the dull, heavy expression which that portrait wears. I think the poet told me that he had given the painter only one or two sittings. As to the photographs, none of them is really satisfactory.
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