Lot Essay
The drawing is not in Mrs Surtees' catalogue but clearly belongs to the same group as three studies of this model which she lists, in the Birmingham City Art Gallery, the National Museums of Wales, Cardiff, and the Chelsea Public Library (see Virginia Surtees, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1971, I, p. 157, nos. 262-4). She assigns the drawings to 1862 on the basis of an entry in G.P. Boyce's diary for 22 October that year: 'To Rossetti's studio with him ... He ... had made divers drawings of "Fatty" Aggie M' (loc. cit.). Our study may well be one of these drawings.
According to William Michael Rossetti, Aggie Manetti, known as 'Fatty Aggie', was a Scotswoman 'of no rigid virtue who had a most energetic as well as beautiful profile'; this was 'not without some analogy to that of the great Napolean', a point very evident in our drawing. As Mrs Surtees comments, 'it is difficult to reconcile her surname, Manetti, with her Scottish blood, unless perhaps she had acquired the name by marriage'. She sat to Rossetti for his watercolour Sweet Tooth, c. 1862-4 (Surtees, Addenda, no. 123) and possibly for Joan of Arc, 1863 (S. 162) and La Castagnetta, c. 1863 (S. 166; sold in these Rooms 11 June 1993, lot 103a)
According to William Michael Rossetti, Aggie Manetti, known as 'Fatty Aggie', was a Scotswoman 'of no rigid virtue who had a most energetic as well as beautiful profile'; this was 'not without some analogy to that of the great Napolean', a point very evident in our drawing. As Mrs Surtees comments, 'it is difficult to reconcile her surname, Manetti, with her Scottish blood, unless perhaps she had acquired the name by marriage'. She sat to Rossetti for his watercolour Sweet Tooth, c. 1862-4 (Surtees, Addenda, no. 123) and possibly for Joan of Arc, 1863 (S. 162) and La Castagnetta, c. 1863 (S. 166; sold in these Rooms 11 June 1993, lot 103a)