The True Rossetti

Office on that day, and I remember remarking on a in art. Desire can make itself felt through a
purity of pattern in them at which the Post-Impres- work of art, but it must be the lyrical desire that
sionists seem to aim. I was naturally interested life should assume a selected aspect. It must
therefore to find this very point taken up by express the will that would impose on life its own
Mr. Roger Fry in the pages of " The Burlington taste. It is thus that art is influential, creative.
Magazine." I am unable to accept from that The greatest artists are not the receptive ones,
critic his oppressive theory of the limitations of art. however perfect their craft, but those who wish
And I cannot believe that to impose their desire upon
the enduring element in art the world, because in any
is often the one of which other shape life is unen-
the artist is himself most hp^^"^^^R durable to them. We can
conscious. Nor can I WW mark the entrance of the
believe that a work of art m"^ "artist" into Philosophy
becomes more a work of H J&IPttfet. or anv other field by this
art as it stands clear of all bl jjff';•> @EkjM determination on his part,
the cluster of associations s|i<f Desire, as we have
which the objects it repre- Wm^^m W$ described it, finds its natural
sents may summon to our ||§I|jJr' means of expression in art.
mind. The advocates of wjW ifflMP*^ II is visible in all influen-
what they term " significant ''HHIh ^ art" 11 *s tc> ^e felt *n
form " insist that we should the " Rae Rossettis," in that
value a picture for what it JjBI very passion for the
is in itself and not for what S^fll romantic which Mr. Roger
we can bring to it, every H '■■wKfm fiStm Fry misinterprets as "anti-
person bringing something Wk IF" .^jjj^N "^|1B quarian curiosity." But
different to it. But as a r9$ | »; /V-XX; ' J-$ desire of this kind is as

matter of fact does not con- different from the love-
sciousness itself function sickness which seems o
as a process by which we wreck Rossetti's later art as
advance towards the im- H 1 I • fl -%m it is from the desire of a
pression which we receive ; man with a headache for
did not vision—which now a pillow. There were
seems such a passive faculty certain things about Rossetti
—once receive its impres- I latterly to which he could
sions by putting out ■ J m ■ I no more give expression in
antennae? I cannot recon- painting than he could to a
cile myself to a theory by f 'II 1 headache,
which of all the thousand In Rossetti's later art the
things a picture holds out to rf« ' $ r U presence of main lines of
the spectator, he is only design is less obviously felt,
entitled to take two or three JHll The accessories do not fall
about which he has received in with the mood, and there-
instructions in a " mani- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^M fore they do not—as does
festo" „ the intertwined necklace

damozei. of the sanct grael

In Rossetti's art of 1857 water-colour by d. g. rossetti in the beautiful picture

there is a quietness of (National Gallery of British Art) Monna Vanna, for instance

which there is no sign in —fall naturally in with

the distempered mood of the rhythm of design. The

his later period. Therefore it may seem para- accessories are treated illustratively, photographi-
doxical to urge that in 1857 his art is more fully cally—they are accessories but not accessory to the
charged with feeling than at a later stage. But design, and the artist is in a state of mind when
just as we may claim that everything that can find his eyes are almost closed to objects which at one
expression in art is legitimate to it, so there are time had each their separate meaning for him.
some things for which expression cannot be found There are whole tracts in his canvases then where

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