A Darker Side to The Rossettis Amidst the Decadence of Victorian Aestheticism
By Elle Borissow
Advertised as tracing the “romance and radicalism of the Rossetti generation”, The Rossettis at Tate Britain this summer highlighted the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti with a refreshing emphasis on the art of his female Pre-Raphaelite counterparts: Elizabeth Siddal, Christina Rossetti, and Jane Morris (née Burden). Morris and Siddal have both historically been better known as the muses whose features so powerfully inspired Rossetti’s most famous paintings, yet this exhibition re-casted them as influential artists and craftswomen in their own rights, highlighting Morris’ embroidery and many of Siddal’s watercolours and ink drawings.
Chronologically organised and adopting an eclectic old-worldly flow, this exhibition marked a starkly ornate curatorial divergence from the modernist ‘white cube’ aesthetics which have become so ubiquitous in galleries today, every wall organically peppered with sketches, diary pages, illuminated prints, watercolours, oils, original gelatine silver prints, and even two locks of hair: Elizabeth Siddal’s fiery auburn and Dante Gabriel’s chocolatey curl. Sensuously luxurious in presentation, with wallpaper, jewellery, heritage objects nestled in many a nook, and a handful of inviting – though forbidden – embroidered armchairs, Tate Britain presented the playfully practical, patterned frivolity of the Aesthetic Movement and Arts and Crafts revival. Curatorially, this choice felt authentic and in alignment with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’s paradoxically experimental aim for a ‘modern’ return to craft tradition. The sheer variety of media was abundant and served to emphasise not only how prolific the Pre-Raphaelites were as a collective, but also to offer a broad survey of their varied artistic interests and concerns in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Most often the Pre-Raphaelites are praised for their romantic and idealised depictions of stereotypically beautiful women with flowing hair and full lips, and their painterly attention to naturalistic detail typical of their Medieval revivalist ideology. Though plentifully represented here – particularly in the final gallery which housed the larger and more well-known oils – a painting which stood out and added something profoundly new to my pre-conception of the Pre-Raphaelites was Found (c. 1854) [Fig. 1], fundamentally radical in its socio-political conscience when pinned against their usual frivolity.
[Figure 1] Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Found, c. 1854, oil on panel, 91.4 x 80 cm, Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington.
Displayed in this exhibition alongside two preparatory oil sketches, Found is Rossetti’s only known work in which he engages directly with the theme of prostitution. It depicts an impoverished, vulnerable woman modelled on Sarah Cox (known as ‘Fanny Cornforth’) collapsed on the curb. She is wilted, limp and pale against a brick wall as a deeply moving allegory of urban impoverishment. The contrast of red earthen bricks so close to this woman’s face conjures a parallel with the neighbouring paintings; instead of the wild auburn locks in Lady Lilith (1866-88), the coarseness of the bricks only serve to highlight the coldness of her sickly skin, how rapidly the colour has drained from her cheeks without a trace, and further, how uncomfortably this is juxtaposed with the cheery twee rose print on her dress which, draped across the filthy pavement, is a far cry from the regal lustre of Rossetti’s usual sitter. It is unclear as to the intention of the farmer, whose supposed aid – or grip of her languid arms – mirrors the restraint of the netted calf struggling behind them on the cart, innocently bound on its way to market. Set against the backdrop of industrial London, Rossetti portrays a much darker side of urban modernity in this painting, illuminating rife social inequality and dire poverty in Victorian Britain instead of his more typical subjects of idyllic female beauty. The social consciousness of this painting, reworked and incomplete in several versions (fitting of such an inconclusive narrative) expresses a raw conscience and social awareness unparalleled by his other works, arguably contributing something radically revolutionary to The Rossettis.
Beata Beatrix (c. 1864-70) [Fig. 2] also stood out as another painting charged with both deep personal emotion and pertinent social symbolism. Following the death of Elizabeth Siddal in 1862, resulting from an opiate addition, Rossetti allegorised his own heartbreak through Dante Alighieri’s despair at the death of his beloved Beatrice. The Tate describes this work as a “spiritual transfiguration” of Siddal’s death; laden with aestheticism and foreshadowing symbolism, this work sees a halo-emblazoned red bird which brings Siddal a poppy – a symbol of her death and its cause. The sundial acts as a mememto mori, representing her time having passed, as Rossetti’s self-portrait at her right-hand side looks upon the angel of Love in front the Ponte Vecchio Bridge, recalling the symbolic journey to the underworld in Dante’s Inferno. Aesthetically, the golden aura surrounding Siddal as Beatrice represents her as an angelic figure – the hazy treatment of her skin more akin to that of the angel than of the living Rossetti. She appears dignified and graceful in her peaceful acceptance of death, a mystical memorial of her slipping from one realm to the next.
[Figure 2] Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Beata Beatrix, c. 1864-70, oil on canvas, 88 x 69 cm, Tate Britain, London.
While Elizabeth Siddal’s life and death became an integral theme in Rossetti’s work, The Rossettis succeeded in recognising her not only as a ‘tragic muse’ but as an artist and poet in her own right. Most often harkening back to medieval influences, Siddal’s sketches and paintings displayed in the exhibition similarly drew inspiration from great tragic poems – her watercolour Lady Clare (1854-7) [Fig. 3] depicts the moment from Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Lady Clare’ whereupon the titular character is betrayed at the altar after discovering she is not truly a Lady from birth but the nurse’s daughter, swapped in her infancy. Arguably, as with many other Pre-Raphaelite works, the true subject in Siddal’s painting sometimes seems to become a formalist relishing of the fabrics, textures, and rich jewel tones of the paint which take on a vibrant life of their own. The small stained-glass window within the painting encapsulates shrunken simplified figures and outlines, though the entire watercolour could be seen as being like stained-glass from a few paces back.
[Figure 3] Elizabeth Siddal, Lady Clare, c. 1854-57, watercolour on paper, 33.8 x 25.4 cm, private collection.
As an exhibition, The Rossettis at Tate Britain approached the Pre-Raphaelites in an extensive, aesthetically beautiful, yet sensitive manner; their curation was an all-encompassing decorative delight, whilst simultaneously waning where necessary to frame some of the heavier subjects across the various rooms. Many themes cropped up throughout such an expansive body of work, with only space to discuss several of the most ‘radical’ here, but undeniably the exhibition’s aim at expanding the discussion of the Rossettis and their circle was fulfilled.