Everything Rossetti Did After 1868 is Rubbish

 I was reading the Pall Mall Budget (2nd February 1883) today and came across this interesting quote:

    "If Rossetti had died in 1868, at the age of forty, his fame as a poet would be far less than it at present is; his fame as a painter would have suffered no diminution. It would, on the contrary, have rather been augmented by the absence of so many works, covering so large a space, in which the finest powers of his brush and of his brain are scarcely represented at all."

Well, where shall we start? This was a review of the Rossetti retrospective at the Burlington Club which was a supplement to the Royal Academy official show (not to mention Fanny Cornforth's show at the Rossetti Gallery, which they didn't mention, obviously) so the reviewer would have been able to see a vast amount (if not quite all) of Rossetti's output in oil, watercolour, chalk and ink.  It can therefore not be through ignorance that they made the claim that everything art-wise after 1868 was bobbins. I scoffed in a self-righteous manner, because of course Rossetti was brill in the 1870s, but then thought about what we would be losing.  Had Fanny Cornforth not have been successful in keeping Rossetti alive, what would we have lost?

The reviewer regarded the exhibition at Burlington Club as the 'appendix' to the 'text' that was the RA, but thought it superior, as it contained more experimental, earlier work.  The review argued it had more originality, more variety and more of an insight over Rossetti's talent and genius in art. Take for example, The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice...

The Meeting of Dante and Beatrice in Paradise (1853)

The review called the above picture 'a mass of crude blue projected on a crude green basis; it happens to be beautiful and therefore right.'  They call it an experiment and that Rossetti was unusual for having the audacity to make something so wrong but make it extraordinarily right. For something less 'in your face,' try The Merciless Lady...

The Merciless Lady (1865)

This is described as 'sweet and delicate in the extreme, and of an emotional intensity which is beyond praise.' There is also love for Hesterna Rosa, How They Met Themselves and basically all the other watercolours.  It's not that the reviewer hated all the oils; they didn't mind the Proserpine or The Blessed Damozel which were there, but on the whole he found them 'morbid and extravagant, without invention, showing no intellectual stress, little affected by nature or humanity.' If the reviewer had their way, this painting would have been his last...

Mrs William Morris or The Blue Silk Dress (1868)

This portrait of Jane Morris is as good as any other portrait in Europe, the reviewer claimed, and was the best he had done. So, was everything after that point really unoriginal and uninspired?

Fanny Cornforth (1874)

I obviously have a bias - all paintings of Fanny are before the 1868 deadline so I can merrily shout 'bobbins' at everything after. Mind you, she appeared in some chalks in 1870-75.  Rats. It would take out a lot of Jane Morris and Alexa Wilding, so how original were all those oils?

Mariana (1870)

Arguably, Mariana is just The Blue Silk Dress with an irritating child making noise in the background.

The Bower Meadow (1872)

Rossetti makes Alexa Wilding the same in every single painting - she just faces in a different direction or leans a bit more - The Bower Meadow is awfully like La Ghirlandata, Veronica Veronese is awfully like A Sea Spell - either sit up, lean forward and reach or hold a thing, normally a musical instrument.

Mnemosyne (1876-1881)

Mnemosyne is the same as The Salutation of Beatrice (1880-81) and all those damn Pandoras, oh, and definitely Astarte Syriaca (1877).  Also, just the one facial expression. The reviewer was right! It's all the same! Why 1868? What could have possibly change in 1869?

Beata Beatrix (1864-70)

The three paintings that the reviewer singled out as being morbid and awful were Beata Beatrix, Dante's Dream and The Blessed Damozel. It took me a moment to see the connection in the review between everything good and everything bad and the date when it all changed. Granted, it might all be a coincidence, but it seems to me that Elizabeth Siddal's death and the effect it had on Rossetti is at the root of the problem. In two of the paintings that were singled out, Elizabeth is dead or dying and the third is about a dead lass looking down on her still-living beloved. The turning point was the year when Rossetti, losing eyesight from arguably the stress of Elizabeth's death, digs her up for the poems.

The First Madness of Ophelia (1864)

This is a hill I will die on - you cannot judge paintings without knowing the biographical surroundings. Okay, of course you can, but I prefer the rounder picture of understanding what exactly is going on it an artist's life before writing off a good half of his output. I would be astonished if the reviewer was not acquainted with Rossetti's life in 1869 and the significance of what they were saying. Think it all went downhill in 1869? Babe, He had his wife dug up for some worm-holed poems which ultimately resulted in his attempted suicide and progressive deterioration. He didn't have time for experimental watercolour.

Let's take three pictures on the same theme - a woman at a window, two from before the deadline and one after...

Fair Rosamund (1861)

Girl at the Lattice (1862)

La Donna Della Finestra (The Lady of Pity) (1879)

Here are three women at windows or Tre Donna a Tre Finestre if you are feeling fancy. In the first two, the women are intent on something, someone, within their little universe - is it their lover? Is it their rival? They are flushed, they are expectant, they are despairing. I'm not sure what expression Jane has except 'Jane' - the same expression she wears in every painting he does of her. She is staring at us, or more precisely, at Rossetti with her unknowable expression. I don't like to read too much into paintings (which is nonsense as I love it) but maybe the reason that none of the women have expressions after 1868 is because Rossetti no longer knew what anyone was feeling, let alone how to express that. Plus blank pretty women sell well.  Take your pick.

How They Met Themselves (1861)

The reviewer liked How They Met Themselves and I have to admit it's one of my favourites too. Do I like it more than any of his works after 1868? That's tricky as you are looking at the work of a later, much more experienced artist who has to sell his works as opposed to a younger, experimental man with fewer traumatic life experiences and fewer bills to pay. Oh, and a much decreased drug habit.

King Arthur and the Weeping Queens (1856-7)

As much as I scoffed, I think the reviewer of this article has a point, but I'm not sure it is for the reason they meant. It is a bit of a coincidence to see 1869 as the decline of Rossetti, but, yes, it really was for the very obvious reason. He was wobbly from 1862 onward but the tipping point has to be the exhumation of Elizabeth for the poems. It is interesting that the reviewer said that had he died in 1868, we would have lost his poems, because his 1870 book of poems would have never been published because the majority of them would have remained in the grave in a certain someone's coffin. Those same poems were the source of attack in reviews and again impacted his mental health which impacted his art.

A Sea Spell (1877)

So, in conclusion, what would have been the impact on Rossetti's legacy had he walked in front of an omnibus in 1868? Tricky, but the sheer output of Millais and Holman Hunt would have dwarfed him, and I think he would be an interesting side-note, very firmly 'the one whose wife died, then he died.' I very much doubt that Fanny Cornforth would have become the hate-figure she was seen as, Alexa would be more forgotten than she is and Jane Morris would have to find someone else to dally with before Scawen Blunt. Goodness, how would we feel about Elizabeth Siddal if no-one had dug her up? Rossetti's impact on Burne-Jones and Morris was firmly before the 1868 point, so they would have followed their paths, but Hall Caine might not have had such a career (shame, cough). It would be interesting to see what the absence of Rossetti's declining years meant for others as I always got the impression from friends like Frederick Shields that people carried around a lot of guilt about not intervening, not getting involved. Would European Symbolism be the same? That's a bit of a bold claim, but those 1870s oils did have an impact. Would Surrealism been the same?  Again, hard to tell, but Rossetti's art had a knock-on effect that our 1883 reviewer would not have known yet. 

Now, if Millais had not fallen in love with Ruskin's wife, would he have remained Pre-Raphaelite? That's the question...