DOI Heft:
Nr. 237 (November, 1916)
DOI Artikel:Wood, T. Martin: The true Rossetti
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43463#0025
THE STUDIO
The true rossette by
T. MARTIN WOOD.
The acquisition of the Rae collection of
Rossetti water-colours for the National Gallery of
British Art is one of the events in the history of
the National collections upon which the nation is
most entitled to be congratulated. To appreciate
the importance of the acquisition it is necessary to
recall that we have in these water-colours the true
Rossetti : that is, the Rossetti
whose influence was perhaps
the most vital of all those that
contributed to the Romantic
movement in England — a
movement that opposed itself
to certain aspects of indus¬
trialism that threatened to
lower national ideals.
In every artist’s life-work
there is one moment that for
him is truer than any other.
There is a moment when what
is most purely of himself finds
absolutely free expression.
Some artists “find” them-
selves, as the phrase is, in
their first manner, sometimes
to lose themselves again;
others are late in coming
to themselves. An artist
changes; it may be said that
he is not always the same
artist, an influence more
powerful than himself may
momentarily absorb him and
for the time seem to destroy
in him something that was his
very own. Or, losing interest
in life, his condition will be
reflected in his art by
diminished intensity. The
characteristic of the greatest
art of the world is its intensity.
Rossetti’s art was never so
fully charged as in 1857, when
he produced the series of
LX. No. 237.—November 1916
water-colours which we have under review. These
water-colours show a pattern in each case rich
in that sheer music of design that is associated
in our minds with primitive art—a music that
Post-Impressionism appears to think it can revive
merely from its own consciousness that such music
can be created.
I was permitted to see the Rae water-colours on
the very day that they arrived at the Tate Gallery,
good fortune having brought me to the Keeper’s
“the blue closet”
WATER-COLOUR BY D. G. ROSSETTI
(National Gallery of British Art)
3
The true rossette by
T. MARTIN WOOD.
The acquisition of the Rae collection of
Rossetti water-colours for the National Gallery of
British Art is one of the events in the history of
the National collections upon which the nation is
most entitled to be congratulated. To appreciate
the importance of the acquisition it is necessary to
recall that we have in these water-colours the true
Rossetti : that is, the Rossetti
whose influence was perhaps
the most vital of all those that
contributed to the Romantic
movement in England — a
movement that opposed itself
to certain aspects of indus¬
trialism that threatened to
lower national ideals.
In every artist’s life-work
there is one moment that for
him is truer than any other.
There is a moment when what
is most purely of himself finds
absolutely free expression.
Some artists “find” them-
selves, as the phrase is, in
their first manner, sometimes
to lose themselves again;
others are late in coming
to themselves. An artist
changes; it may be said that
he is not always the same
artist, an influence more
powerful than himself may
momentarily absorb him and
for the time seem to destroy
in him something that was his
very own. Or, losing interest
in life, his condition will be
reflected in his art by
diminished intensity. The
characteristic of the greatest
art of the world is its intensity.
Rossetti’s art was never so
fully charged as in 1857, when
he produced the series of
LX. No. 237.—November 1916
water-colours which we have under review. These
water-colours show a pattern in each case rich
in that sheer music of design that is associated
in our minds with primitive art—a music that
Post-Impressionism appears to think it can revive
merely from its own consciousness that such music
can be created.
I was permitted to see the Rae water-colours on
the very day that they arrived at the Tate Gallery,
good fortune having brought me to the Keeper’s
“the blue closet”
WATER-COLOUR BY D. G. ROSSETTI
(National Gallery of British Art)
3