Complete Works of Ford Madox Ford, page 845
This, as far as the present writer knows, was Rossetti’s first attempt at that definite fitting of a design to a circumscribed, prescribed place that is called Applied Art. From one critical point of view it may be held that all art should be decorative; from another a decorative “look” in a picture is said to be a distinct negation of all virtue. L’un et l’autre, in fact, se disent. It may be desirable to attempt to discriminate between the two standpoints — to find that middle way in which we may go safest.
Rossetti made four extremely charming little. water-colours — one may say the four most charming of his works of this period — The Blue Closet, The Wedding of St George, the Christmas Carol and The Tune of Seven Towers, “whose names are four sweet symphonies.” These works — let it once again be said that they are most charming — all have the decorative feeling harped and reharped upon.
In the Blue Closet there is a positive riot of ornamental tilework, which, if it enhances the feeling, distracts the eye. In the Wedding of St George there are scutcheons, decorative straw work on chairs, ornaments of which the present writer knows neither the name nor the purpose. In the Christmas Carol there are a number of objects, such as have become familiar at the Arts and Crafts exhibitions, in a cupboard above the head of the central figure; a musical instrument answering to no known name but having a very ornamental look. In The Tune of Seven Towers all these things are exaggeratedly present and, in addition, a pennon-staff cuts nearly diagonally across the foreground of the picture. Its introduction seems to be quite arbitrary unless it be meant to account for the pennon itself which hangs down one side of the composition. If this latter be the case the pennon might have been considered as hanging from the roof beams and the fact left to the observer’s imagination.
Now if these works be intended for pictures — for pictures, that is, rendering an aspect of human life — it may be said definitely that these obtrusive details are faults. If, on the other hand, these are intended to be decorative works — as indeed it may be postulated that they more or less are — it seems a solecism that they should be presented not as works of applied art, but as pictures pure and simple. It is idle to say that the works, say of the early Florentine artists, all have this decorative look; because these very works were intended not as pictures but as applied works. The Picture, in these early days, had no existence hanging framed and isolated upon a wall. Artists painted upon coffers, taking into account the spaces occupied by locks; they painted upon walls, harmonising their designs with the architectural lines. Their art, in fact, was “applied,” and they themselves were in varying degrees craftsmen. To imitate therefore the look of these mediæval works in pictures intended to be seen as modern pictures are seen, is in essentials wrong. Rossetti, however, may be justified along certain lines — either that he did not mean these drawings to be taken as pictures, or that the accessories are introduced to create an atmosphere — to give local colour. The probability is that he had no particular desire to have them considered as decorations, and that he did wish to strike a particular note — not necessarily the mediæval one. [This seems to be more certainly the fact if it be taken into consideration that the two panels for the Red Lion Square house — the two Salutations of Beatrice of 1859 — are in no particular sense decorative. Yet these ought surely to have been so. They were, when in place, united by the Dantis Amor design, which is decorative and symbolic in every sense. The fact is, that Rossetti probably had no settled opinion on this matter.]
Having said that a picture should be a picture, a piece of applied art, and that these designs halt between the two; having said that Rossetti probably intended them to be pictures, and was by one thing and another beguiled into so filling them with objects decorated, that the pictures look like pieces of decorative, work — one may approach the works themselves. In the end the justification of a work of art lies in its charm, and all these water-colours have the abstract, inconsequent charm of the fairytale told in earnestness. It is a particular charm arising, perhaps, out of the very want of skill of the narrator — the charm of naïveté, that is. And the Rossetti of that day was naif. One may, the other condemnation apart, pick a number of holes in each of these four designs. The distractingness of the decorative insistence has been already alluded to. Otherwise, each of the four compositions contains too many figures. In the Christmas Carol there is no actual need for either the woman who is combing the player’s hair or for the other, who is reaching up to the cupboard; in the Tune of Seven Towers no need for either the rapt listener behind the chair, or the figure who leans through a little “sliding panel” to place an orange branch on a bed. These figures being introduced it became necessary to find them something to do. Consequently they comb hair and lay orange branches on beds. The desire for filling up space — an, at bottom, aesthetic desire — thus detracting even from the literary idea. These undoubtedly are defects. [And if it be necessary, others might be mentioned — the bad drawing of the figure behind the chair in the Tune of Seven Towers, for instance.] It is as well to put them on record before surrendering to the “charm” of the pictures.
It is as well to put them on record, because in certain classes of work the faults actually add to the charm. Naivetes, when they are naïvetés and not preciosity, are usually charming. In fairy-tales — and these works of Rossetti must be classed with fairy-tales — piquancy is gained by the contrast of the natural with the supernatural, as long as these contrasts are introduced single-heartedly. Surprise is, after all, the quality that gives charm to art.
When in Irish fairy-tales the Good People confer lasting prosperity on a household in return for a bowl of milk, or a wooden measure of meal; when in the Legenda Aurea St Martin secures eternal bliss because he cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar; our imagination is touched and tickled by the contrast of the spiritually mystic bliss with the homely materialism of the good deed. Similar contrasts make the charm of these drawings of Rossetti. But all the things to be changed in the analogy must be changed.
It is not the literary spirit of the anecdotes visualised that gives the pictures their value. Nor is it merely the contrast of real people with preternatural decorations great though this effect may be. In the Wedding of St George, for instance, there is wonderfully vital realism in the figure of the Princess Sabra. It is a rendering of a woman giving way finally and ecstatically to love; giving way after tremendous agony, suspense and uncertainty to whole and whole-souled bliss; and, as a rendering of a woman in the moment of the great Happy Ending of all romances it is as real and as vivid as Rossetti’s drawing of Francesca da Rimini. This real and vital figure is contrasted with a quite idealised Italian - mediæval, golden Knight; with similarly conceived angels striking a row of little bells; with all sorts of mediæval things, and with a deliberately humorous dragon’s head sticking out of a box.
Now, if this contrast had been willed, consciously and of malice prepense there would have been practically no more “charm” than there is in a wilful anachronism — than in, say, Mark Twain’s “Yankee at the Court of King Arthur,” where dummy knights in armour are discomfited by electrified barbed-wire fencing, and a modern American perturbs King Arthur by preaching down chivalric ideals to the tune of nineteenth century morality.
The picture of the Wedding of St George is the most charming of the four under consideration.* But it is one that for the nonce
*The present writer finds, however, on referring to notes made in front of the pictures that he has called the Christmas Carol “the best of this series.” The above is, however, his view after reconsidering the matter in the light of Mr Marillier’s excellent reproductions. This is probably due to questions of colour. That of the St George is in places bright to the point of distraction.
* It may be worth while to point out that as in the case of the Girlhood of Mary and of the Arthurs Tomb this incident in the history of St George is not given in any known legend but is a product of Rossetti’s invention.
is a little dangerous to analyse because it raises the whole great and very bewildering question of what is and is not legitimate in the portrayal of historic or legendary scenes — the question whether Shakespeare’s “Julius Cæsar” should be played by characters in trunk hose or in togas.* The same “points” however may be made in the other designs. In the Christmas Carol, for instance, the player’s hands are astonishingly real and really play — as really as those of any modern harmonium player. The figure behind equally really reaches down something from a shelf — as really as a modern housemaid half-tiptoes to “get at” a pot of jam. It is the contrast of these realities with the half-wilful exaggerations of other parts of the pictures that give the “charm” of which so much more might be written without exhausting the subject.
What, however, these actualities of rendering seem to point to is that Rossetti really wished these pictures to be realistic renderings of things that might have happened in a certain age of twilight and legend in the world. He meant as far as he could, to make them true visualisings of a more or less definite past; and the infinitude of accessory imaginings was introduced to give local colour. It is as such that they charm us. As aesthetic conceptions they are perhaps not the highest art. That, as has been recorded, arrests us whether we will or no. This, on the other hand, appeals very intimately only if we will let it do so; if we will enter the door which it holds open for us. And that, once more, is much. The fact is that during these and the ensuing years Rossetti was being subtly influenced towards “decorative” work. His nature and his circumstances made him absolutely need encouragement. He, unfortunately perhaps, was not one of those men who could for an indefinite length of time and whilst pursuing a definite line, face mental starvation. His abilities were many and various — perhaps too many and too various.
At a very early stage he had seemed to have every intention of becoming a religious-ascetic painter. He had planned, afterwards, complicated “machines” of historic art in the manner of Madox Brown’s Wickliffes and Chaucers. Both of these styles he had to give up for want of patrons. When Ruskin “took him up” he had shown in the drawing of Found that he might have turned to the rendering of the actual. Ruskin forced him to display his abilities as a painter of Florentine chaste-mysticisms. In the Breuse sans Pitié; in the realism of Fra Pace; in the rather brutal head and vigorous action of the Launcelot dejending. Gueneveres chamber; and in the realistic parts of the pictures most lately under consideration there is evidence that he could, had fate and his friends so willed it, have been direct as well as actual, luxuriant as well as humorous.
He was however chef d’école — of a school that clamoured for his becoming quasi-mediævally decorative. And this, following for a time the line of least resistance, he became. He began, in fact, to supply the only demands that reached him.*
The immediate results of this were that his luxuriance created ultra-elaboration, and his humour became quaintness. [This is most immediately demonstrable in the head of the dragon in its box in the Wedding of St George — a deliberate bit of exaggeration that is not very excusable and that Rossetti himself made fun of.] Left to himself at this stage he might have produced substantially the same designs and have introduced only just sufficient detail to fix the local colour. His followers, however, encouraged him to add decoration to decoration, minutiae to minutiae, and figure to figure. They were, of course, tending towards Morris, Marshall, Falkner & Co.
Rossetti himself, however, was in essence
* The essential difference between the pure Rossetti and the Rossetti influenced by Burne-Jones and Morris is sufficiently visible in a comparison of the Damsel of the Sancrael and later designs. (It is exaggerated in a Graal design — a Launcelot in a boat attended by two angels — by Miss Siddal. With the fervour of a disciple, a woman and a lover, she out-Rossetti’d Rossetti in simplicity and “manner.”)
not a decorative craftsman. His actual applied work fell quite below the standard of Morris; his designs for stained glass were not as appropriate to their purpose as those of Madox Brown; the furniture that he painted in his pictures was much better than that he designed for his own use.
When, as has been said, he came to design door-panels for the house in Red Lion Square* he painted definite pictures. The Regina Cordium panel of 1861 is a quite elaborately moulded nude head and shoulders with a gilt-screen-background. In the canon-rule for decorations of the sort it is laid down that mural decorations should have neither the appearance of standing out from the wall nor of being a window through which a landscape is seen. The wall, as wall, in fact, is to be respected. Rossetti, therefore, by painting a vivid rounded figure sinned against this canon; and it is as if he had attempted to atone for it by painting yet another wall on
* The Red Lion Square house was one, half a club, half a place of business at which the “firm” of Morris, Marshall, Falkner & Co first hung out its sign.
to the wall. His King Rene’s Honeymoon panel for the Seddon cabinet is open to the same objection but in less degree; the Annunciation pulpit or altar-panel, also of 1861, is a rather inferior picture quite distinct from the Ecce Ancilla Domini. The fact is that however “decorative” Rossetti’s spirit may have been — or, however “decorative” * his wonderfully alive sympathies may have let him for a time become, he never really mastered the rules of applied art. He gave it very little attention after 1862 or 1863.*
To return to the actual pictures of this period. The four to which so much attention has been — quite deservedly — paid, together
* The present writer remembers to have seen “included” in the Madox Brown sale a sofa that had been designed by Rossetti for the Red Lion Square house. It was a rather startling and not singularly satisfying affair of round yellow wood posts and rails. It had needle-worked cushions — the designs not being singularly adapted for needlework. Rossetti’s really personal tastes in furniture made for a Catholic inclusion of all kinds of sumptuous and gorgeous bric-a-brac that was anything rather than “decorative” in the Morris & Co sense.
with the Oxford designs, occupied Rossetti until the end of 1857. In 1858 came a very “charming” pen and ink drawing of Ophelia returning the gifts to Hamlet. In this there are only the two figures of the tragedy; but in revenge there are too many details. Ophelia sits, as if overcome by a momentary faintness, in a sort of pew, the sides of which are carved after the fashion of the most elaborate chapter stalls. Behind, leaning over the pew doorway is the figure of Hamlet, a very fine conception, a little too large for the composition — or at least for the figure of Ophelia. Behind Hamlet again are various architectural whimsicalities — carved pillars and winding staircases. The drawing is noteworthy because here we come upon a definite first stage of a very much altered, very finely treated, and very considerably later, “historic” subject. This design in fact definitely became a water-colour in 1866. The latter though far from being a technically perfect work is as a picture-composition on another plane than the 1858 pen and ink drawing. Ophelia has risen to her feet and confronts Hamlet, a tall, dramatic figure of weak grief — quite a different person from the fainting girl of the earlier pew. The pew, the carvings, the architectural extravagances of the background have disappeared and, instead, the head of Hamlet stands out against shadows and gloom.*
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One characteristic that is rather marked in the Hamlet drawing of 1858 is the fact that Rossetti made little or no attempt to realise the scene historically. The period suggested by the accessories is neither that of Hamlet nor yet that of Shakespeare. The fact per se is not markedly interesting. But the added fact that Rossetti’s Magdalen at the door of Simon the Pharisee of 1858 is a decoratively altered version of a similar design of 1856, shows to what an extent the mediæval influences overcame Rossetti’s strong sense of dramatic fitness. This is a very crowded and very spirited design of an immense number of Italianised figures, and of its kind is certainly one of Rossetti’s most remarkable works. It may be considered as the pendant of the Cassandra pen and ink drawing of 1861.
*The water-colour is, in fact, a quite different design, having only the resemblance to the pen and ink that a finished novel has to a first draft.
It is difficult to say why the latter subject should have appealed sufficiently intimately to Rossetti to make him desire to render it so much his own. It was probably the epic figure of Helen of Troy; or the epic tale portraying so vastly the dangers of the love of women. As a design it is a tour de force, but one which may command respect. The fine figure of Hector is, of course, conventional and not much touched by Rossetti’s own individuality. That of Cassandra, if wanting in mystery and even in madness, is not essentially inadequate; and the idea of introducing the soldiers behind, as almost architectural and certainly decorative conventions, is ingenious.
But, on the whole, Rossetti commands most respect when working within the limits of his racial and temperamental sympathies, and when he went outside these, was not always even nearly dramatically successful. The Princess Parisadé and the Golden Water, for instance, from the “Arabian Nights,” is in no sense a conception of an oriental subject, and Rossetti probably had no great idea of making it one. What his sympathies were still absorbed by is well enough shown in the Bocca Baciata and Lucrezia Borgia of the years 1859-61. In the Lucrezia, in the mirror near the left shoulder of the sumptuous woman is shown Lucrezia’s husband, Duke Alfonso of Biscaglia, whom she has just poisoned and “who is being walked up and down the room by Pope Alexander IV., in order to settle the poison in his system.” This device of narrating in a mirror the happenings in the part of the room occupied by the spectator — of thus completing the anecdote — was a trick much beloved by both Rossetti and Madox Brown. The latter had already adopted it in his Take your son, sir. In the Lucrezia, its use, dramatically speaking, is singularly effective and indeed admirable.
