Thursday, April 24, 2014

The Charcoal Thieves John Roddam Spencer Stanhope


Vogue


Oliver Reed



Oliver Reed as the English Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti in TV film (1967) Dante's Inferno 

The grave of Dante Gabriel Rossetti



The grave of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Parish Church of All Saints, Birchington, Kent Here sleeps / Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti / honoured under the name of / Dante Gabriel Rossetti / among painters as a painter / and among poets as a poet / born in London / of parentage mainly Italian 12 May 1828 / died at Birchington 9 April 1882 The memorial Celtic Cross was designed by Ford Maddox Brown.

Fanny 1869



graphite on paper

Sophie Grey



This is still often seen attributed to Millais but is actually
Charles Edward Perugini (1839-1918)
Sophie Grey
signed with monogram (lower right) 
oil on canvas
10½ x 8¾ in.

Hypnos, The God Of Sleep. 1892. Simeon Solomon


Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Preparing for the Ball (1867) by Emma Sandys


A Lady Holding a Rose - Emma Sandys 1873


Berenice, Queen of Egypt by Frederick Sandys



The Queen is depicted holding her long blond hair, which is an integral part of a myth told about her. During the absence of her husband, Ptolemy III, she is said to have dedicated her hair to Aphrodite for his safe return, cutting it off and placing it in the goddess’ temple. The hair somehow disappeared, and it was said that it was whisked away into the heavens by the goddess herself, pleased with the offering, becoming the constellation Coma Berenices(Meaning Berenice’s hair).

Friday, April 11, 2014

The former home of Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones is for sale



http://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/32571688

A Curl of Copper and Pearl - Kirsty Stonell Walke


London, 1865: Literally plucked from the street, Alice Wilding finds herself the silent audience to the most turbulent years of the life of bohemian artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. As his dumb muse, she witnesses infidelity, madness, forgery, lust, theft and death. A Curl of Copper and Pearl is a memoir of the lives of others in a world where truth is reliant on who is painting the picture.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Copper-Pearl-Kirsty-Stonell-Walker/dp/1494398923/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397200589&sr=8-1&keywords=kirsty+walker

http://fannycornforth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/a-curl-of-copper-and-pearl.html

William Morris Society of Canada knows how to do cake!



http://www.wmsc.ca/2014/03/its-over-and-inspiration-lingers.html

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting The Day Dream by Frederick Shields, 1880



John Everett Millais - Awful Protection against Midges (Scotland, 1853)



This drawing comes from a series of about twenty-five amusing records that Millais made as a visual diary of his stay in Scotland with John Ruskin and his wife Effie. It was on this holiday at Brig o’Turk, taken between July and October in 1853, that Millais painted his famous portrait of John Ruskin standing beside Glenfinlas Falls and became deeply infatuated with his wife, Effie. Millais was an avid fan of the humorous magazine Punch and on returning from Scotland he showed the results of the lighter side of his trip (his relations with Ruskin having become naturally somewhat strained) to his friend, the Punch cartoonist John Leech. Although Millais was delighted to see his sketches published he asked for them to be anonymous. The images “would never go with the serious position I occupy in regard to Art”

Awful Protection Against Midges was published on the 12th November 1853. It appeared with the title Ingenious protection against midges - a valuable hint to sketchers from nature. Simplified by Leech for the wood block engraving, the Punch illustration lacks the delicate detail of the original drawing. Millais had written to his friend Martha Combe from Brig o’Turk on the 6th September describing this well-known Scottish pest. “There is one drawback to this almost perfect happiness - the midges. They bite so dreadfully that it is beyond human endurance to sit quiet, therefore many a splendid day passes without being able to work”. Martha and Thomas Combe were important Pre-Raphaelite patrons. 

The kilted figure on the left is Millais’ pupil and friend, the artist Michael Halliday in his adopted native attire. On the right may well be Millais himself, however Millais usually portrayed himself with exaggerated gangly legs and arms. An alternative candidate is Millais’ brother William, who can be seen sketching in another of the drawings smoking a similar cheroot. William’s favoured pastime was trout fishing for breakfast.

http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/pre-raphaelite/john-everett-millais/13407

Priestess of Delphi - John Collier 1891


Wednesday, April 9, 2014

John William Waterhouse - Head of Orpheus - a Sketch (England, c.1899 - 1900)



Oil on board
This symbolist work is a study for the head of Orpheus in Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus (1900), which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1901 and 1922. The atmosphere in the finished painting is both tranquil and one “of wonder”.(1)
The time and thought devoted to it are attested not only by the preliminary pencil and oil sketches showing significant differences in composition, but by a full-scale study of the floating head, comparable in treatment to the finished work.(2)
Mr J. W. Waterhouse stands mid-way between Burne-Jones and Leighton; his aim is not so much to reconstruct, with truth of local details, the legendary past, as to re-tell the stories, pictorially, in a fashion of his own. There is more of dream than of conscious thought, probably, in Mr Waterhouse's Head of Orpheus, red hair twined round the lyre, as it floats in a rock-set pool of the Hebrus, watched by two sad-eyed nymphs.(3)
1. R. de la Sizeranne, The Art Journal, 1901, page 165
2. Anthony Hobson, The Art and Life of J. W. Waterhouse RA 1849-1917, Studio Vista/Christies 1980
3. R. de la Sizeranne, The Art Journal, 1901


John William Waterhouse - Mermaid, 1900