Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Day-dream
Oil on canvas
62 ½ x 36 ½”
1880

Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882) was an artist and poet who founded an artists' movement known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848.

Rossetti wrote this poem to accompany the portrait:

“The thronged boughs of the shadowy sycamore

Still bear young leaflets half the summer through ;

From when the robin ‘gainst the unhidden blue

Perched dark, till now, deep in the leafy core,

The embowered throstle’s urgent wood-notes soar

Through summer silence. Still the leaves come new ;

Yet never rosy-sheathed as those which drew

Their spiral tongues from spring-buds heretofore.

Within the branching shade of Reverie

Dreams even may spring till autumn : yet none be

Like woman’s budding day-dream spirit-fann’d.

Lo! tow’rd deep skies, not deeper than her look,

She dreams ; till now on her forgotten book

Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.”

This portrait was painted of the artist’s secret lover, Jane Morris. Clues to the affair are in the painting, such as the honeysuckle in her hand. Honeysuckles were a Victorian symbol of love.

Since the theme of this gallery is the female muse, it made sense to me to open with a painting from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, since the artists were notorious for obsessing over whoever their current muses were and often began tumultuous affairs with them. Rossetti spotted Jane Morris in a theatre and then spent years using her as a subject for his art.