Supreme Surrender: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

"The empirical evidence for the social, perhaps even biological necessity for contemplation, in these apocalyptic hours, is all too obvious. Civilizations endure for as long as they can hold life in total vision. The function of the contemplative is contemplation. The function of the artist is the revelation of reality in process, permanence in change, the place of 

value in a world of facts. 

His duty is to keep open the channels of contemplation and to discover new ones. His role is purely revelatory. He can bring individuals to the spring of the good, and the beautiful, but he cannot make them drink."

 - Kenneth Rexroth, World Outside the Window

One of my favourite painters and poets, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, died on this day in 1882. I can remember first seeing a couple of his paintings during a school trip to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and being bowled over by these extraordinary works which left a deep, profound impression on me. They featured the most extraordinary, fascinating women, often with long, red luxuriant hair, and the colours of their clothes and the backgrounds were of the most rich, luscious hues. They were an astonishing assault on the senses and I was more than happy to drown in them. Over the years I then visited other galleries and became more knowledgeable about the Pre-Raphaelites, and although I love and admire most of their work in general, it was Rossetti's that really made my heart leap. And then, when I first met Lydia a few moons ago, she at that time had magnificent long hair that cascaded down her shoulders (she is now and has been for a few years a mesmerising, glam 'Bowie-Pixie!') and she was also dressed in a beautiful, deep blue crushed velvet dress, and I can remember looking at her sitting on the sofa, thinking that one of Rossetti's glorious portraits had come to life and was sitting down next to me. I should probably explain that I had just recently been started on new medication at that point, and I had also had a few drinks of malibu (such hedonism!) against doctors orders I have to admit, and my mind was acting rather strangely. (Does it ever act otherwise?) My eyes certainly hadn't been deceived about Lydia, though, intoxicated and slightly drugged as I might have been, as she looked exactly as I have described. I just found it incomprehensible that everybody else in the room seemed to think it was perfectly natural that a majestic and dazzling work of art had come to life and was conversing with everyone as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Unfortunately, I have hardly any photos of Lydia from this period, as, to my great sadness, she was very camera shy at that point, but one that I do have will give you some idea of just how remarkably alike she looked to a Rossetti painting called Lady Lilith, that had long been etched in my own heart and mind, and which goes a long way to explaining why I had made this undeniable connection...

Rossetti's Lady Lilith (1868):

and Lydia (in 2001):

As you can clearly see, it was definitely the people who hadn't recognised this incredible similarity, not me, who were acting like they were high on prescription drugs. Happily, I didn't let this bother me and just sat there in a purple haze, gazing at and listening to this magnetic young woman, who was quite unlike any one I'd ever met, and who had already begun to sprinkle stardust and weave her indelible magic on my soul. And then, in around 2002, and by this juncture I was ecstatically engaged to this living, breathing, dynamic work of art, I discovered that the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool was to have an exhibition dedicated to the one and only Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Lydia and I went together for the first visit and it was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. To see so many of Rossetti's dreamlike and sensuous images was an absolute privilege. It's hard to describe the feeling accurately that this exhibition had on me. The pictures, the writings that described the works and Rossetti's ideas, were like a confirmation that the love of beauty, colour and symbolism was not just an affair of the senses but had a spiritual element too, which is something I'd always felt intuitively but not seen and felt and had described in such a convincing way. Lydia and I had a wonderful time, and I'm sure my ego was greatly inflated knowing that almost all of the people at the exhibition would have been green with envy at the woman who was a living embodiment of most of the paintings on the walls strolling around arm in arm with me. I returned to that exhibition in Liverpool as many times as I could before its run came to a close, managed to record a documentary that was on Granada TV about it which I still have, and generally became a different person after its magnetic influence. To my wonder and delight, I then discovered when we moved down south two and half years ago, that one of Rossetti's most beguiling pictures, Venus Verticordia resided at The Russell-Cotes Gallery. Lydia and myself have been along a couple of times and it is a truly stunning picture...

Rossetti's Venus Verticordia (1864-68):

Gentle readers, to have been able to sit in front of this particular painting and contemplate it at leisure has been a truly life-affirming experience, and has given me the idea for a story that I desperately want to write at some point. It also brings a warm glow to my heart when I consider that this particular Venus (Venus Verticordia literally means 'The Venus who Turns Hearts') is in constant residence at a place not very far away from where we are and can be visited at almost any time that's convenient. It's strange how events transpire sometimes.


Rossetti's story and his importance to the arts still fascinates me even now. As well as being an extraordinary painter, he was also a great poet, and he was one of the first to write specific poems to go with his paintings. He also translated Dante Alighieri and other early Italian poets, and he, along with his fellow Pre-Raphaelites, were a revolutionary movement in the arts and were arguably the first modernists.


His story is not without its strange, gothic elements, however. Rossetti's first key model was Elizabeth (Lizzie) Siddall, whom he painted obsessively and without whom many of his masterpieces wouldn't be what they are. They first met in 1850 and she soon became his model, mistress, and, in 1860, his wife. But in 1862, she died from a laudanum overdose and in a fit of grief, Rossetti had the manuscript of his poems buried in the coffin with her. Years later, in 1869, Rossetti decided to issue a collection of his unpublished poems to coincide with the success of his House of Life poems, but to his utter horror and dismay, he found that he couldn't track down most of those earlier poems that he had given copies of to most of his friends, and that the only remaining way to recover them all would be to have Elizabeth Siddall's coffin exhumed. This grisly task was performed by some of Rossetti's friends and the manuscript was duly recovered and disinfected so the poems could be published. And soon afterwards a legend began to circulate that when Rossetti's friends had opened the coffin, Lizzie's body had in fact been "perfectly preserved", and her luxurious hair had apparently continued to grow in the tomb, to such an extent that some of it had to be cut before the book could be disentangled and removed.


Rossetti had by this point begun an affair with Jane Morris, who was already married, but with whom he had a passionate relationship and whom he also painted many times. But his life was beginning to fall apart. Wracked with guilt for what he considered his defiling of Lizzie's grave, he became increasingly reliant on choral and laudanum to be able to sleep, and he became, as sensitive as he already was, neurotically so. His paintings and poetry were savaged by the critic Robert Buchanan as being overtly sensual and obscene, and although Rossetti wrote a passionate reply to this charge, emphasising their mixture of love, beauty and spirit, he became even more reclusive, and had for company a veritable menagerie at his home, surrounding himself with some of his favourite animals: peacocks, wombats and kangaroos. His relationship with Jane Morris unfortunately came to an end, in part because of his choral addiction, and on April 9th in 1882, he died at the age of 54. He left behind some of the most beautiful paintings that I have ever seen, and his celebration of the type of female beauty that he loved is truly something to behold. His poems are also incredibly beautiful and sensual, although there is far more to them than just a celebration of the flesh. As Joan Rees writes: 

"All that he most valued was represented by a female figure, and that Beauty should be Art, and that Art was a woman was to him only natural. As for love, in Rossetti it is primarily a response to Beauty, a desire that unites body and soul in aspiration towards an ideal fulfilment."

I've been hugely influenced by Rossetti's paintings and poems in my life, and to have seen so many of his magnificent works is a treasure beyond price. To Rossetti and his friends, any strikingly attractive woman was called a "stunner", and that is certainly the effect Lydia had and still has on my soul and consciousness. His paintings made me even more sensitive and appreciative of the extraordinary beauty that can be found in art, love and the natural world, and I can constantly feel his influence on how I respond to all of the arts, and not just painting. Listening to Rufus Wainwright, for example, makes me feel in a way that is remarkably similar to the way I do when I look at one of Rossetti's pictures. In fact, Rufus's magical, rich and haunting voice is for me the sonic equivalent to a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting, and whenever I hear Bowie's lyric in his song, 'Thursday's Child', "Nothing prepared me for your smile," I feel that, unlike Bowie, a hidden hand was actually preparing my inner self for the time when I would meet Lydia. Who knows how these things work but my appreciation of the kind of beauty that Lydia has in such abundance was never going to be missed by me, especially since I had previously been exposed to Rossetti's glorious portraits. I am an unashamed aesthete and sensualist (darlings!), and the kind of feelings that Rossetti's pictures and poems inspire in me are the ones I seek in most of the music, literature and art that I engage with. Of course there is the angry, punk side that I love as well, but when it's soothing, star-searching emotions or some visual glam that my psyche demands, Rossetti is someone to whom I can always turn. And in this world that is increasingly dominated by dull and life-denying philistinism, and deadening bureaucracy envelops our lives, there is always Rossetti's magical dreamworld to make a home in. His paintings celebrating the women he loved are moreover a celebration of love itself, a love not hemmed in and shackled by ridiculous social or religious conventions. And crucially, I would argue that his female figures are not merely there to be just looked at, as they actually have an intense inner life and possess a kind of fire in their eyes which bursts out at the viewer. Many of his heroines are anything but passive, and instead of looking away from the viewer as so many women represented in art do, they look back directly, defiantly refusing to accept a passive position, and they simply radiate their own desires, dreams and complex inner lives. To conclude, it seems to me that unlike many other paintings from the Victorian era, Rossetti's works would seem to suggest that women, or a woman that is deeply adored, could perhaps be the true keeper and guardian of the mystery and meaning of the universe. And who am I to argue with that?

La Ghirlandata (1873):

A Sea Spell (1877):

La Bella Mano (1875):

Proserpine (1874):

Pandora (1869):

"For like his namesake Dante Alighieri, Rossetti knows no region of spirit which shall not also be sensuous or material."
- Walter Pater, Appreciations

Stay Beautiful.