Dante Gabriel Rossetti
About the artist:
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Born: 12 May 1828, Died: 9 April 1882
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Periods: Romanticism, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Aestheticism, Symbolism, Modern art
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painter and poet
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co founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
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used oil paints, water colour
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Rossetti used Elizabeth Siddal as his model
I chose this artist because I saw some of his work on my visit to the Laing art gallery in Newcastle. I found his work to be very beautiful and elegant with rich colours and a range of golds that make the painting look very regal.
I would like to try and paint on of his works in my own style - in the way that Glenn Brown does.
After researching further into the artist I found that he was also a poet and the words he wrote gave his paintings more meaning.
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The pre-Raphaelite brotherhood
They were founded in 1848, and the group contained seven members who shared an interest in contemporary poetry and disagreed with they typical way art looked and the messages it conveyed at the time. Their goal was to introduce a new kind of art that was more vibrant and detailed than previous British works.
Members of the group included John Everett Millais, , William Holman Hunt, Thomas Woolner; Frederic Stephens; and William Michael Rossetti.
Poetry
The Greek and Roman Goddess of spring is shown eating a pomegranate. According to myth she was abducted and either ate of her own will or was forced to consume pomegranate seeds (the food of the dead) which cursed her to remain for part of the year in the land of the dead.
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"Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
Unto this wall, - one instant and no more
Admitted at my distant palace-door
Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
That chills me: and afar how far away,
The nights that shall become the days that were.
Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
Strange ways in thought, and listenfor a sign:
And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
O, Whose sounds mine inner sense in fain to bring,
Continually together murmuring) —
'Woe me for thee, unhappy Proserpine'."
— D. G. Rossetti
Response
