Lot Essay
This finished drawing, which is not listed in Mrs Surtees' catalogue, is closely related to the watercolour Sweet Tooth private collection; Virginia Surtees, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonna©, 1971, no.123 and Addenda).
In a letter dated 15 July 1904, William Michael Rossetti discusses the watercolour and writes of the sitter, Agnes Manetti: 'I recollect very well the person from whom this watercolour was painted. She was a Scotchwoman in London, with a handsome pleasing face, more especially a fine profile. She was not of the "respectable" class, nor yet a regular artists' model. I forget her surname. Her christian name was Agnes, and she was known as "Aggie" in my Brother's immediate circle. My Brother painted from her two or three times, and drew from her several times, in 1864 - not I think earlier than that year, and scarcely later. His principal painting from her (watercolour) is named "Monna Pomona".'
There are two studies for this finished drawing. One in the National Museum of Wales, is of the head and shoulders and shows the sitter with a grape stalk between her teeth; the other, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Surtees, op.cit., no.295 and Addenda, no.123A), is a very similar composition except that the sitter is Fanny Cornforth and it is a half as opposed to three-quarter length portrait.
In a letter dated 15 July 1904, William Michael Rossetti discusses the watercolour and writes of the sitter, Agnes Manetti: 'I recollect very well the person from whom this watercolour was painted. She was a Scotchwoman in London, with a handsome pleasing face, more especially a fine profile. She was not of the "respectable" class, nor yet a regular artists' model. I forget her surname. Her christian name was Agnes, and she was known as "Aggie" in my Brother's immediate circle. My Brother painted from her two or three times, and drew from her several times, in 1864 - not I think earlier than that year, and scarcely later. His principal painting from her (watercolour) is named "Monna Pomona".'
There are two studies for this finished drawing. One in the National Museum of Wales, is of the head and shoulders and shows the sitter with a grape stalk between her teeth; the other, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Surtees, op.cit., no.295 and Addenda, no.123A), is a very similar composition except that the sitter is Fanny Cornforth and it is a half as opposed to three-quarter length portrait.