Detail

  • Young female wearing a bonnet and cape sits on wooden steps set within a stone wall. She looks towards the right as if waiting for someone.
    He's late...

    There is much debate about the sitter of this painting. Some believe it to be a portrait of Effie Gray, Ruskin's wife at the time who later married Millais. Others believe it to be Annie Miller, who modelled for Millais.
  • Girl arranging her hair, three-quarter length pose, facing front. Verso: composition of five figures - three women and two children.
    Preparation...
  • Figure of a girl with ornaments, standing, three-quarters to left. On the left, a sketch of a glass cupboard with bracket, ornamented with bats and an owl with a rat in its beak.
    Dressed and decorated...

    Created during a summer holiday of 1853, Millais and the Ruskins spent together at Glenfinlas in the Scottish Highlands. This proved to be a fateful trip, as Millais fell in love with Ruskin's unhappy wife Effie. After an annulment of her marriage to Ruskin, she and Millais married in 1855.
  • A young girl sits with her older sister by the side of the road. The older girl has an accordion on her lap. A cornfield dominates the background. The sky contains a double rainbow. The older girl's blindness is indicated by her closed eyes.
    The models were Matilda Proudfoot as the blind girl and Isabella Nichol as her younger sister. Millais had first used his wife Effie but then replaced her with Matilda.

    I wonder how she felt about that?
  • The a young woman is shown seated and half length at the moment of suspension between life and death. A bird drops it's red poppy between her open hands. In the background Dante is shown looking across to the figure of Love.The frame has four incised roundels, one on each side.

    Beata Beatrix

    Multiple Artists

    1877

    This painting was unfinished at the time of Rossetti's death and the background was completed by Ford Madox Brown. The painting is a personal expression of Rossetti's love for his deceased wife, Elizabeth Siddal.
  • Both recto and verso are divided into three sections.  The top portion of recto shows a woman after Rossetti.  Her second section is a chubby torso with a waistcoat and jacket.  Third section shows very short legs.  Upside down is the face of a man in spectacles.  Verso: a composite Victorian woman in her underwear.
    The term stunner was in use earlier than one might imagine...really.
  • A woman, in drapery, with a crown of roses on her head, seen from behind with a bed before her.
    The wood block for this engraving was cut by Lucy Faulkner
  • Two female figures clasping each other (very poor condition).
    An engraved proof after a now lost drawing by Rossetti used for the title page of Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market and other Poems' (1862). Recent research suggests that Lucy Faulkner engraved the wood block for this image.

    Christina was Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sister, possibly one woman who was safe from his advances!
  • An enclosed depiction of the young Virgin and the announcing Angel. Additional strip of paper attached along the bottom.
    The figure of the Virgin may have originally been based on Jane Morris, but the face, as finally realised, was most likely modelled on the artist's fiance, Georgiana Macdonald.
  • Portrait of a woman in full-face, crossed hands, in heavy costume.
    Burne-Jones's wife, Georgiana, whom he had recently married, her appearance belies her age of just twenty-two.
  • Side profile of a girl with long hair.
    A very early profile study of Maria Zambaco, with whom Burne-Jones became involved romantically in June 1868.
  • A young woman with loose hair is seated on the ground, absorbed in her own thoughts, putting her hair in her mouth. In the background are cliffs and the sea.
    A design for a wood-engraving to illustrate Christina Rossetti's poem 'If' published in 'The Argosy,' 1866 (vo. 1, no. 4, March, p. 336). The poem reflects on the theme of melancholy love and was later re-titled 'Hope against Hope'. In this illustration Sandys sets a lone female figure against a landscape, brooding on the absence of her lover.

    She looks a little more than melancholy.
  • And a romantic wedding....

    A design for a stained glass window. It depicts Christina Rossetti, Wiliam Michael Rossttie, Elizabeth Siddal and William Morris.

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