DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-82)

细节

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-82)
A collection of four letters, comprising three 1p. a.l.s. by Rossetti to C.F. Hayward, dated 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, Saturday, and Tuesday night, and Wednesday, and one 2pp. in response, dated 8 Adam St., November 9th, 1862, all concerning a proposed commission of Rossetti's for decorating a cabinet, the first reporting that the 'banknote I had of you yesterday has been stolen out of my pocket', the second stating that 'I would be willing to do the 4 for #10, but could not for less. Then it would be simple work in brown on the gilding, but would include a head or half figure in each', with the response from Hayward, saying 'Perhaps you can give us a bowl of flowers or fruit running up the centre of the panels ... I fancy only full length figures will do ... we would have liked ... the head of a tree filling the outline & a couple of figures plucking fruit', and a final note from Rossetti saying that carriers 'sent for the panels yesterday but they were not quite dry. So I told them to send again today and to bring the #6 due'. (4)

拍品专文

In these previously unpublished letters, The architect Charles Forster Hayward, FSA, FRIBA (1830-1905) discusses here an unknown commission, possibly connected with the Morris firm, founded in 1861 of which Rossetti was a partner. Rossetti had a sofa made for himself with similar decoration now in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, with six female heads in roundels pained in brown on gold (see drawing in the Birmingham City Art Gallery [no. 321'04; Virginia Surtees, 'Dante Gabriel Rossetti; a Catalogue Raisonné', 1971, no. 746]). The death of his wife and model, Elizabeth Siddal, the previous year, accounts for the black borders to the writing paper.

We are grateful to the British Architecture Library for help in preparing this entry.