International studio (60.1916/1917)

I he True Rossetti

Office on that day, and I remember remarking on a
purity of pattern in them at which the Post-Impres-
sionists seem to aim. I was naturally interested
therefore to find this very point taken up by
Mr. Roger Fry in the pages of “The Burlington
Magazine.” I am unable to accept from that
critic his oppressive theory of the limitations of art.
And I cannot believe that
the enduring element in art
is often the one of which
the artist is himself most
conscious. Nor can I
believe that a work of art
becomes more a work of
art as it stands clear of all
the cluster of associations
which the objects it repre¬
sents may summon to our
mind. The advocates of
what they term “ significant
form ” insist that we should
value a picture for what it
is in itself and not for what
we can bring to it, every
person bringing something
different to it. But as a
matter of fact does not con¬
sciousness itself function
as a process by which we
advance towards the im¬
pression which we receive ;
did not vision—which now
seems such a passive faculty
—once receive . its impres¬
sions by putting out
antennae ? I cannot recon¬
cile myself to a theory by
which of all the thousand
things a picture holds out to
the spectator, he is only
entitled to take two or three
about which he has received
instructions in a “ mani¬
festo.”
In Rossetti’s art of 1857
there is a quietness of
which there is no sign in
the distempered mood of
his later period. Therefore
■doxical to urge that in 1857
■charged with feeling than at a later stage. But
just as we may claim that everything that can find
expression in art is legitimate to it, so there are
some things for which expression cannot be found

in art. Desire can make itself felt through a
work of art, but it must be the lyrical desire that
life should assume a selected aspect. It must
express the will that would impose on life its own
taste. It is thus that art is influential, creative.
The greatest artists are not the receptive ones,
however perfect their craft, but those who wish
to impose their desire upon
the world, because in any
other shape life is unen-
durable to them. We can
mark the entrance of the
“artist” into Philosophy
or any other field by this
determination on his part.
Desire, as we have
described it, finds its natural
means of expression in art.
It is visible in all influen-
tial art. It is to be felt in
the “ Rae Rossettis,” in that
very passion for the
romantic which Mr. Roger
Fry misinterprets as “anti-
quarian curiosity.” But
desire of this kind is as
different from the love-
sickness which seems to
wreck Rossetti’s later art as
it is from the desire of a
man with a headache for
a pillow. There were
certain things about Rossetti
latterly to which he could
no more give expression in
painting than he could to a
headache.
In Rossetti’s later art the
presence of main ■ lines of
design is less obviously felt.
The accessories do not fall
in with the mood, and there-
fore they do not—as does
the intertwined necklace
in the beautiful picture
Monna Vanna, for instance
— fall naturally in with
the rhythm of design. The
accessories are treated illustratively, photographi-
cally—they are accessories but not accessory to the
design, and the artist is in a state of mind when
his eyes are almost closed to objects which at one
time had each their separate meaning for him.
There are whole tracts in his canvases then where

may seem para-

it
his art is more fully


“damozei. of the sanct grael”
WATER-COLOUR BY D. G. ROSSETTI
(National Gallery of British Art)

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