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1871 ( 1872 ?) - . . , .
3 1872 , , , . , . 1874 , , .
Kelmscort Manor - Oxfordshire 1871 . , . , ( 1871 ) Water Willow.
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1871
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1871 "K " . (Thomas Maitland) . " " (Fleshy School of Poetry) , . , "". , . " " (The Stealsy School of Criticism). , , . - . . 1871 (Rose Mary) " ".
May Morris 1872
Model: May Morris. Younger daughter of William and Jane Morris (b. 1862).
Jenny Morris 1871.
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1871 1874 , , : La Girlandata, Veronica Veronese, The Bower Meadow Roman Widow. , E. R. Layland , , , ( ) Veronica Veronese, Roman Widow.
Veronica Veronese
The painting is one of the most important among the many Venetian-inspired pictures that dominate DGR's artistic output during the 1860s and 1870s. Elaborately decorative, it is an excellent example of the abstract way DGR handles ostensibly figurative subject matter. As its various commentators have noticed, the picture represents “the artistic soul in the act of creation” (Ainsworth 97). It is a visionary portrait of that soul as it had been incarnated in the practise of Paolo Veronese.
Begun in January 1872 without any explicit commission, the painting was bought by Frederick Leyland as soon as DGR told him about it, and described his intentions for the work. DGR completed it in March of the same year and sent it to Leyland at that time.
The French quotation on the picture frame, supposedly from The Letters of Girolamo Ridolfi, was actually written by DGR or possibly Swinburne. It constitutes a kind of explanation of some of the picture's most important iconographical features: “Suddenly leaning forward, the Lady Veronica rapidly wrote the first notes on the virgin page. Then she took the bow of her violin to make her dream reality; but before commencing to play the instrument hanging from her hand, she remained quiet a few moments, listening to the inspiring bird, while her left hand strayed over the strings searching for the supreme melody, still elusive. It was the marriage of the voices of nature and the soul—the dawn of a mystic creation” (this is Rowland Elzea's translation of the French text on the picture frame). The “marriage” noted here is emblematically represented in the figure of the uncaged bird, which stands simultaneously as a figure of nature and of the soul.
Sarah Phelps Smith has explicated the picture's flower symbolism: the bird cage is decorated with camomile, or “energy in adversity”; the primroses symbolize youth and the daffodils (narcissi) stand for reflection or meditation. But David Nolta argues that the camomile is in fact celandine, which in herbal lore was a notable specific for diseases of the eyes. (Nolta's autobiographical reading of the picture is greatly strengthened by this view of the flower symbolism.)
The green velvet dress in the picture was borrowed from Jane Morris, the background drapery is a Renaissance brocade, the jewelry is Indian silver, the violin is from DGR's collection of musical instruments. The fan hanging at her side is the same as that which appears extended in Monna Vanna . The musical manuscript showing the first bars of a composition seems in debt to George Boyce, to whom DGR wrote in March 1872 asking if he “had any old written music & could you lend me such” (quoted in Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné I. 128).
The french inscription attributed to Girolamo Ridolfi is almost certainly the work of Swinburne.
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. 1871 Pandora , . 131 × 79
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