Found – Gabriel Rossetti – Completed 1881

Initiated in 1851, ‘Found’ teased Rossetti throughout his painting life. He struggled with perspective and the technical challenges of painting from nature and the work was never fully completed. The painting depicts a surprise encounter between a drover driving to market and his former sweetheart, now shamed, a fallen woman. Poignant and dramatic, the painting remained true to Pre Raphaelite doctrines with the artist travelling to study a wall in Chiswick to finesse detail and spending long hours at Ford Maddox Brown’s perfecting the image of the calf. This painting is unique in that it is the only large-scale example of Rossetti attempting to provide an element of social commentary, one of the key principles of the early brotherhood.