Part 2
In comparing the study for _Christ at the House of Simon the Pharisee_ with the completed drawing, the question arises whether, with the elaboration that has come into the latter, some of the intensity of the study has escaped; or whether, on the other hand, the subject has gained. The simplicity of the first undoubtedly possesses something which is subsequently lost in elaboration, and yet taking the completed picture and looking into it one finds a lesson in Rossetti's methods. We find that by dwelling upon his subject he has emphasised certain notes, has repeated as it were a refrain, and made more spirited and poetic in rendering the figure of the lover in the foreground. After-thoughts have given every touch that could possibly enrich, and, at the same time concentrate, dramatic motif in this figure. The embroidery on his coat, the flowers in his hair, the hair itself, and the face so mocking and fascinating and sure of itself, is more in the spirit of the subject than the gentler face as it appears in the sketch.
The figure of the Magdalene gains in many ways as completed, and though the distressed loving face and the flowing hair of the sketch are changed, the alteration of the expression on the face from one of intense distress to one of proud determination is very interesting as showing how his subjects grew and changed under his hand. It is wholly to the gain of the picture the different gesture which he has arrived at in the second drawing, where the Magdalene with both hands throws the flowers from her hair. The dramatic quality upon which we have insisted as part of Rossetti's art is nowhere better shown than in the deer quietly eating leaves from the wall, all unconscious that there is acted out beside it the most pathetically beautiful drama of the world. One misses in the finished picture some of the sensitive drawing given in the sketch to the Magdalene's dress. Here, instead, her clothes are as if she were perfectly still; they give no indication of her movements and the stormy action round her. That is the fault of Pre-Raphaelitism--to fritter away the spirit for the sake of the embroidery upon the body's clothes; to lose emphasis in elaboration, to sacrifice a greater beauty for a meaner one.
Certain characteristics that are strongest in Rossetti's art are the outcome of the intensely human course his imagination took. His drawings are of the kind that one can live with long; looking into them often one is always rewarded by finding some new thing, and one's thoughts are ever being arrested by new appreciation of some quaint conceit. The depths of Rossetti's imagination are such in these drawings that we may look into them whilst watching the changes of our own thought.
The best that art has given to us has often come from artists in a quite sub-conscious way. Because Rossetti's genius was so many-sided it is probable that he could explain most of what he did to himself, and if in the picture of which we have been speaking we take such a thing as the alterations between the figures in the background, and as they are shown in the sketch, it will seem apparent that he gave reasons to himself for everything in his compositions, and did not drift into anything by accident in aiming at design. In the sketch the nearest figure pursues the Magdalene beckoning, in the finished drawing her movements are arrested, she and the other figures pause before the door, speechless with cynical amusement and surprise as the Magdalene enters.
_You should have wept her yesterday_ was done as an illustration to one of his sister's poems. It represents the return of the Prince after many delays to find his lady has died, believing him unfaithful. The ugly drawing of the Prince spoils an otherwise beautiful design. This ugliness is only compensated for by the six girls who turn their pitiful eyes so naturally from their prayer to look towards the Prince. The grace of girlhood in their faces must come as a revelation to some of Rossetti's critics.
The illustration to Tennyson's "Palace of Art" should excite us as curious and beautiful. We have in it one great poet's illustration for another's poem, made with perfect art. We have in this drawing the echo of the one's imagination in the other. Rossetti has brought the drawing on to the paper as a dream. An immense courage is demanded of the artist, when he shall forget his reason for a dream, and when he has the courage not to reconcile his dream with the demands of the prosaic mind, demanding only what is prosaic. The lines illustrated are--
in a clear-wall'd city on the sea, Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily An angel look'd at her.
The drawing interprets, and it is wonderful that it should do so, the imaginative mood in which we feel these lines were written. Like music they bring their message in mystical sound. One accepts their beauty feverishly. In such a mood as they invite reason greets imagination. The words do not represent things or a place, but a mood and an emotion. In them is just such a strange and beautiful medley as music brings to us, as great art always makes reasonable to us.
One thing we must not forget in criticising Rossetti, and that is that we are speaking of one who was among the first to enter into the inheritance of his age, that on these grounds his art is placed amongst the arts which in every age live by reason of their significance. Commemorated in Grecian art is the perfected form of man as the flower of animal evolution. With this perfection attained another day of creation was begun and is continued, in which the things of the spirit are being built up until the perfect spirit is made. And just as it was long before man so far awoke to a knowledge of the beauty which triumphs in him as to worship his own shape (placing before himself his own image as the standard to which the gods had led him, and from which he might not go back without fear of their displeasure) so not everywhere yet is the spirit of man learning its own beauty from the consciousness of itself to which it has attained.
Such art as Rossetti's, with its subordination of everything to an emotional and spiritual motive, does certainly anticipate, as other modern work like the sculpture of Rodin anticipates, the direction in which the greatness of art in the future must tend. That which is concerned with character, with all that outwardly gives indication of the soul, has appeared and re-appeared triumphantly throughout the history of art--a spirit changing its raiment. The art of Rossetti fails just in so far as its craftsmanship is a failure, but its imperfections cannot take away its significance. Christianity made the spirit visible and took serenity from the face of art. To-day Art is spiritualising itself by its refinements. It is perfecting itself through such an impressionism of the senses as we have in the art of Whistler, and through the science of the impressionists of France. Their subtleties are based on the broad truths given by masters long ago, and fearful lest any sources of our inspiration should be forgotten what is modern in art has in turn assumed almost every antique shape.
An old manner of painting which was great, does not share its greatness with the modern imitator, but it does not necessarily withhold it from him. Art may clothe itself in some old style, as Rossetti's did, and what shape it takes, whether based on the old or growing out of the new, does not matter when it is the messenger of inward things.
And since no beauty of bodily form greater than Grecian beauty is possible to art, that art will be great which betrays the spirit's flame. The future of life and of art are one. It is inevitable that art shall be great as the spirit of man grows rich. It is for this that we have left behind the serenity which was of Greece and of the partly awakened soul.
ILLUSTRATIONS
PERMANENT REPRODUCTIONS OF THE PICTURES AND STUDIES BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, G.F. WATTS, O.M., R.A., AND SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES ARE PUBLISHED BY FREDK. HOLLYER, 9 PEMBROKE SQUARE, KENSINGTON, W. ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE 12 STAMPS