Lot Essay
The subject is taken from one of the Elegies of the Roman poet Tibullus (I, 3, 82-92), translated by Rossetti himself as follows:
Live chaste, dear love; and while I'm far away,
Be some old dame thy guardian night and day.
She'll sing thee songs, and when the lamp is lit,
Ply the full rock (sic) and draw long threads from it.
So, unannounced, shall I come suddenly,
As 'twere a presence sent from heaven to thee.
Then as thou art, all long and loose thy hair,
Run to me, Delia, run with thy feet bare.
The picture shows the realisation of his wish. Tibullus is seen bursting in at the door, followed by a joyful slave girl, who pulls aside the curtian. Delia is seated wearily, distaff in hand, on a couch, and on the floor is the 'old dame', her guardian, singing to two lutes. A young black slave sleeps across the threshold, and a cat is curled up on the stool at lower right.
Rossetti first treated the subject in a watercolour of the early 1850s, Lizzie Siddal inevitably posing for Delia (Surtees 62 and studies 62 A-F). The present version was commissioned by Frederick Craven, a Manchester businessman who collected watercolours, patronising Rossetti, Madox Brown (see lot 94), Burne-Jones and others. He paid about #235 for it, just securing it ahead of L.R. Valpy, another patron who wanted it (see Doughty and Wahl, loc. cit). More recently it was in the collection of Rossetti's works formed by the artist L.S. Lowry.
A further watercolour version, slightly smaller than ours (Surtees 62 R.2), was painted in 1868 and was on the market last year. A study for Delia, dating from the 1860s and clearly made for our version (Surtees 62 R.I.A), was sold in these Rooms on 29 October 1991, lot 13
Live chaste, dear love; and while I'm far away,
Be some old dame thy guardian night and day.
She'll sing thee songs, and when the lamp is lit,
Ply the full rock (sic) and draw long threads from it.
So, unannounced, shall I come suddenly,
As 'twere a presence sent from heaven to thee.
Then as thou art, all long and loose thy hair,
Run to me, Delia, run with thy feet bare.
The picture shows the realisation of his wish. Tibullus is seen bursting in at the door, followed by a joyful slave girl, who pulls aside the curtian. Delia is seated wearily, distaff in hand, on a couch, and on the floor is the 'old dame', her guardian, singing to two lutes. A young black slave sleeps across the threshold, and a cat is curled up on the stool at lower right.
Rossetti first treated the subject in a watercolour of the early 1850s, Lizzie Siddal inevitably posing for Delia (Surtees 62 and studies 62 A-F). The present version was commissioned by Frederick Craven, a Manchester businessman who collected watercolours, patronising Rossetti, Madox Brown (see lot 94), Burne-Jones and others. He paid about #235 for it, just securing it ahead of L.R. Valpy, another patron who wanted it (see Doughty and Wahl, loc. cit). More recently it was in the collection of Rossetti's works formed by the artist L.S. Lowry.
A further watercolour version, slightly smaller than ours (Surtees 62 R.2), was painted in 1868 and was on the market last year. A study for Delia, dating from the 1860s and clearly made for our version (Surtees 62 R.I.A), was sold in these Rooms on 29 October 1991, lot 13