A variant of this description was originally published at The Rossetti Archive at this location.
Virginia Surtees points out that this watercolour by Dante Gabriel Rossetti was "Possibly originally conceived as the left panel of a triptych... Mary, standing by a stream, plants a lily plant and a rose bush" (vol. 1, 50, no. 87). That conception dates back to July 1849, according to William Michael Rossetti's diary entry for 28 July 1849. The triptych would have included The Girlhood of Mary Virgin as the center panel, this picture as the left panel, and Mary in the House of St. John as the right panel. The model for the Virgin was Elizabeth Siddal. The picture was exhibited in May 1857 at the Russell Place Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition, which included seventy-two entries. DGR was one of the twenty-two artists who contributed pictures. For an account of the exhibition see Fredeman 57.23 and note. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Works Cited
Fredeman, William E. The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. D. S. Brewer, 2002-2010.
Surtees, Virginia. Painting and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonné. vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971.
How to Cite this Web Page (MLA format)
McGann, Jerome. "Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Mary Nazarene (1857)." Omnibus Edition of "In an Artist's Studio. Eds. Pamela Buck, Dino Franco Felluga, Nicole Fluhr, Dominique Gracia, Jerome McGann, Melissa Merte, and Herbert F. Tucker. The COVE: The Central Online Victorian Educator, covecollective.org. [Here, add your last date of access to The COVE].