The Annunciation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1849-50

An early piece by this artist, may even have been his first

The exhibition covered the work and lives of the Rossetti family, from the father Gabriele Rossetti, a political refugee from Italy together with his four children. Gabriele was involved in translating Dante’s Divine Comedy into English, which was a work his children continued after his death. The family were poets and artists. Gabriel Rossetti is well known because of his association with the Pre-Raphaelit Brotherhood, but curiously his sister Christina the poet is better known. She was a prolific writer of poetry. Her poem In the Bleak Midwinter is very well known as a Christmas carol, and would appear in every Christian hymnal, regardless of sect.

Gabriel, his brother William, and five fellow art students founded the Pre Raphaelite Brotherood, the first art group to challenge the soulless painting found in the Royal Academy with its reliance on old master styles. They were to express themselves from their own experiences. They modelled for themselves based on their own interests,and Gabriel drew a portrait of Elizabeth Siddal, a fellow student, and later to be his wife. There is a wonderful collection of her work in this exhibition, as far as I remember the only time that I have seen her work on show. Sadly she caught cold whilst modelling for Rossetti’s painting Ophelia, when she had to lie in a bath of cold water. Colds were treated in those days with laudenum, a mix of opium and alcohol, and it was that that killed her. She was only 39 when she died.

Christina and her sister Maria both chose a single lifestyle. They lived together and worked in the community through an order of Anglican nuns. William would remain single until his 40s when he would marry the artist Lucy Madox Brown.

Christina was to become a celebrity after publishing Goblin Market in 1862 and William became a leading critic and editor alongside his civil service career. Gabriel went on to form a new group: the aesthetic movement , which would change art and design for a second time. he combined working-class women with feminine fantasy inspired by Renaissance portraiture.

The portraits were paired with poems. Double works of art.

Gabriels finalyears were dominated by his obsession with Jane Morris nee Burden. Gabriel met her outside a theatre and asked her to pose as Queen Guinevere. His team included William Morris the designer , as they were painting murals in the Oxford University Union . Morris and Jane were married shortly afterwards and set up house at the Red House at Bexleyheath

Gabriel and William Morris shared the tenancy of Kelmscott Manor, a country house in Oxfordshire. In the early 1870s Gabriel and Jane became lovers