DGR

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded

In September 1848, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The brotherhood reacts, in part, against the use of bitumen, a transparent brown used for depicting exaggerated shadows, aiming instead to reproduce the sharp, brilliant colors found in fifteenth-century art. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print. This photograph, from 7 October 1863, was reproduced as the frontispiece of: Rossetti, William Michael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer. London: Cassell and Company, 1898.

Related Articles

Elizabeth Helsinger, “Lyric Poetry and the Event of Poems, 1870″

Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, “The Moxon Tennyson as Textual Event: 1857, Wood Engraving, and Visual Culture”

Morna O’Neill, “On Walter Crane and the Aims of Decorative Art”

Linda M. Shires, "On Color Theory, 1835: George Field’s Chromatography"

Linda M. Shires, “Color Theory—Charles Lock Eastlake’s 1840 Translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours)”

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic existed from 9 February 1849 to 3 July 1849. The Republic was established after Pope Pius IX fled to Gaeta to the protection of King Ferdinand II of Naples, following the assassination of the papal Minister of Justice. Image: Lithograph of 'Proclamazione delle Repubblica Romana', 1849 (published in 1861). This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

Alison Chapman, "On Il Risorgimento"

Related Articles

Marjorie Stone, “On the Post Office Espionage Scandal, 1844″

Erik Simpson, “On Corinne, Or Italy″

“The Blessed Damozel”

In February 1850, publication of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “The Blessed Damozel.” Image: The Blessed Damozel, oil on canvas, Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University. Completed c. 1871-78. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Related Articles

Jill Galvan, “Tennyson’s Ghosts: The Psychical Research Case of the Cross-Correspondences, 1901-c.1936″

Pre-Raphaelite Art Exhibit

Pre-Raphaelite Art Exhibit, Russell Square, London, from 25 May to 25 June 1857. This was the first exhibition devoted solely to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print. This photograph, from 7 October 1863, was reproduced as the frontispiece of: Rossetti, William Michael, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer. London: Cassell and Company, 1898. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Related Articles

Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, “The Moxon Tennyson as Textual Event: 1857, Wood Engraving, and Visual Culture”

Goblin Market and Other Poems Published

Goblin Market is a Victorian narrative poem written by Christina Rossetti and illustrated by her brother Dante Gabriel. Rossetti felt that the collaboration with her brother was crucial to her overall work, that she deliberately delayed the publication until Dante Garbiel’s illustrations were ready for press. He designed a total of two illustrations, the frontispiece and title page, for The Goblin Market. Both images were pressed using wood engravings, evoking the pre-raphaelite designs popular during the 1860’s. The passages appeal to the senses through vivid descriptions of colours, textures, aromas and taste. Critics assigned the poem to various general categories over the following decades and throughout the twentieth century. It was first viewed as a fairytale but was later viewed as an allegorical piece. Feminist critics often analyzed the poem’s social commentary on gender relations and the relationship between two sisters. Later in the nineteenth century, readers, reviewers, illustrators, and composers began to focus on the poem’s powerful aesthetic qualities. Its sensuous patterns, religious images, and social implications inspired the focus of school studies and as well as musical settings and performances. The power of its visual images, and the two wood-engraved designs by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the poem’s first publication, turned to evoke numerous artistic interpretations, ranging from stained glass windows to gift books.

Curated by Kisha Rendon, Joseph Pereira, and Payton Flood

Public Domain; source: COVE Goblin Market edition by Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Antony Harrison

Rossetti, Poems

In April 1870, Dante Gabriel Rossetti published his first volume of original poetry, marking the start of several decades of renewed lyric experimentation by younger poets like Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, Christina Rossetti, George Meredith, and Gerard Manly Hopkins. Image: Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: albumen print, 7 October 1863. This image is in the public domain in the United States because its copyright has expired.

Articles

Elizabeth Helsinger, “Lyric Poetry and the Event of Poems, 1870″

Dark Blue journal run

From March 1871 to March 1873, the journal, Dark Blue, was published monthly in Great Britain. Dark Blue (1871–73) was a monthly magazine, edited by Oxford undergraduate John Christian Freund, which folded two years after a brilliant debut. During its brief run, it brought together a stunning list of literary and artistic contributors, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne, William Morris, Andrew Lang, Mathilde Blind, Sheridan Le Fanu, Simeon Solomon, and Ford Madox Brown, who produced aesthetically and sexually daring poetry, art, and criticism.

Articles

Anna Maria Jones, “On the Publication of Dark Blue, 1871-73″

Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori Rossetti's 80th Birthday

On April 27 1880 Frances Rossetti turned eighty. In honour of her birthday, Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) gave her a copy of David Main's Treasury of English Sonnets (1880). They personalized their gift by contributing a hand-written sonnet each. DGR designed his illuminated “A Sonnet is a moment’s monument” to fit the dimensions of the book and memorialized the moment of the gift in the lower left corner of the manuscript: "DG Rossetti pro Matre facit Apr: 27: 1880" (DG Rossetti made this for his Mother April 27 1880). While DGR’s sonnet was laid in to the front of the Treasury of English Sonnets, CGR placed her hand-written offering, “Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome…” at the back of the book. In this format, the Rossetti siblings' pair of sonnets effectively became the "Alpha and Omega" of this national collection, commenting on the long tradition of sonnets circulating in manuscript and print for private/public expressions of love, ambition, rivalry, and loss.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Record and a Study published

DGR’s illuminated sonnet was first published as the frontispiece to William Sharp’s biography of the poet-painter, brought out by Macmillan in the year of the poet’s death. In a letter to her brother William dated 26 July 1882, Christina Rossetti reported that their mother, Frances, had loaned “her cherished Main’s Sonnet book, giving him leave to have the ‘Sonnet’ drawing engraved for his book” (Letters of Christina Rossetti vol 3, p. 52).

New Poems by Christina Rossetti published

In 1896, following Christina Rossetti's death in 1894, William Michael Rossetti edited and published New Poems by Christina Rossetti.  The collection included "hitherto unpublished or uncollected" poetry by C. Rossetti, including, notably, the sonnet, "In an Artist's Studio," about her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti's relationship with Elizabeth Siddal.