International studio (60.1916/1917)

The True Rossetti

mere paint itself has to do duty for the beauty
which paint should represent.
The beauty of Rossetti’s Monna Vanna is not
to be denied, but it is of the kind that was so
soon to over-ripen in his pictures and fall with
decay. It is not possible to deny luxuriant rhythm
]n the lines of the
beaded necklace,
as they cross, and
in the line that
seems to swreep
behind the head
and fan from one
shoulder to the
other, or in the
placing of the
hands and the
disposition of the
hair. If we were
to take the main
lines of the whole
design and ab¬
stract them from
their context, as in
imagination it is
not so difficult to
do, I suppose we
should be antici¬
pating the Post-
Impressionist, and
it would not be
possible to deny
the music of the
lines. But we
maintain that they
could not have
been planned in
the abstract;
“for,” in the words
of Spenser, “soule
is forme, and doth
the bodie make.”
Design can
sometimes be still
as well as rhythmic, holding our attention at a
point by the mystery of something hidden there.
In a great work of subjective art the whole canvas
seems illuminated from within, nothing appearing
on the surface that does not seem like thought
itself in shape. Why should we wish the art of
painting to take a lower place than this, as it must
if it is only to speak between the artist and the
spectator in their vision and not between them in
their thought? Mr. Fry infers that the intensity of

facial expression in some of the 1857 wrater-colours
is a disturbing element in the pattern. But is it
not the flame within the lantern, does it not
indicate the place of the heart in the frame of the
design ? Painting that is truly subjective has always
been concerned with rendering facial expression—-
not in the sense of
dramatically re-
presenting joy or
sorrow, but in that
of reflecting tem-
perament, and it
is in spite of him-
self that the artist’s
mood burns its
way in the canvas,
and the face at last
in the picture is
in the profoundest
sense his own.
Design is always
the language of
feeling rather
than of vision,
interpreting the
fall of drapery and
the spread of
tresses as appre-
hended by sym-
pathy rather than
by observation—
acting, as it were,
by a knowledge
obtained in a
caress rather than
by a glance. This
is the key to the
understanding of
rhythm in design.
It explains the
logic of lines in
Greek sculpture.
Drapery does not
fall like that, but
it would do so if it obeyed the law of movement
alone, as sympathy can anticipate it in advance
of vision. In all this we . have the only secret
of grace in design, and the explanation why the
great masters of design were hardly conscious of
departure from Nature.
Since I began to write this article the drawing
The Passover in the Holy Family has become the
property of the National Gallery of British Art.
There is every prospect that the drawings Mary of


“MARY MAGDALENE” WATER-COLOUR BY D. G. ROSSETTI
(National Gallery of British Art: On Loan)