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Lot Essay
This watercolour is over a slightly enlarged photograph of Rossetti's pen and ink drawing Cassandra, dated 1861, in the British Museum (Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonn, Oxford, 1971, vol. I, no. 127; vol. 2, pl. 196). The original drawing, which measures 13 x 18 in., seems to have been inspired by a poem by George Meredith, although the subject of Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam who had the gift of prophecy and foretold the ruin of Troy in the Trojan War, is well known. In a letter to Colonel W.J. Gillum, the drawing's first owner, Rossetti wrote that 'the incident' represented 'is just before Hector's last battle. Cassandra has warned him in vain by her prophecies, and is now throwing herself against a pillar, and rending her clothes in despair, because he will not be detained longer'.
Rossetti seems to have had the photograph taken when the drawing was unfinished, and worked over it extensively with a brush, using brown watercolour and bodycolour, to determine how he should complete the composition in terms of detailed drawing, subtleties of modelling and areas of shadow. The drawing was retouched in 1867, but the photograph was probably corrected at an earlier date since it was almost certainly given by Rossetti to his mother in 1866. According to a letter he wrote her at the time, he sent her a 'chess-table...together with a few other things', including 'photographs. Some of Mrs Cameron's and two of mine - Hamlet and Ophelia and Cassandra,
'Some of Mrs Cameron's' is a reference to Julia Margaret Cameron, and Hamlet and Ophelia can probably be identified with another elaborate pen and ink drawing which formerly belonged to Colonel Gillum and is now in the British Museum.
We are grateful to Mrs Virginia Surtees for her help in preparing this entry.
Rossetti seems to have had the photograph taken when the drawing was unfinished, and worked over it extensively with a brush, using brown watercolour and bodycolour, to determine how he should complete the composition in terms of detailed drawing, subtleties of modelling and areas of shadow. The drawing was retouched in 1867, but the photograph was probably corrected at an earlier date since it was almost certainly given by Rossetti to his mother in 1866. According to a letter he wrote her at the time, he sent her a 'chess-table...together with a few other things', including 'photographs. Some of Mrs Cameron's and two of mine - Hamlet and Ophelia and Cassandra,
'Some of Mrs Cameron's' is a reference to Julia Margaret Cameron, and Hamlet and Ophelia can probably be identified with another elaborate pen and ink drawing which formerly belonged to Colonel Gillum and is now in the British Museum.
We are grateful to Mrs Virginia Surtees for her help in preparing this entry.