Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
These lots have been imported from outside the EU … 顯示更多 The Property of W.E. Fredeman (Lots 61-68) William Fredeman, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, 1956-1991, was a leading authority on the Victorians and especially the Pre-Raphaelites. A voracious collector of all things associated with the Brotherhood and their circle, he acquired not only paintings, works on paper and stained glass, offered in the present sale, but also autograph letters, photographs, nearly 6000 books and almost 2000 pieces of Victoriana, collected over five decades. Fredeman was born Richard Singleton Merrill in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and orphaned at a young age when the family car crashed into the Missouri River. He was placed in the care of two spinster aunts who ran an antique shop in Little Rock where his love of collecting began. At the age of six he was adopted by Lucille Fredeman, a stockbroker turned lawyer, and her husband Frank, a general in the US Army. They renamed him William Evan Fredeman, but he stubbornly would only answer to “Dick”; this streak made him challenging to live with throughout his life, but it certainly served him well in his academic pursuits. After serving in the navy during World War II, Fredeman took his BA at Hendrix College, Arkansas, and subsequently his MA and PhD at the University of Oklahoma. In 1956 he secured a position at the University of British Columbia. It was the Victorian charm of British Columbia and its mountainous landscape, rising from the sea- loch, suggestive of Walter Scott’s Scotland, that was said to have inspired his love of all things Victorian. Fredeman visited London in 1959-60, just as the Victorian revival was beginning, and made friends with other enthusiasts such as the book collector Simon Nowell-Smith and the art dealer Jeremy Maas. Fredeman’s own subsequent publications helped fuel the revival. Pre-Raphaelitism: A Biblocritical Study was published in 1965, followed by A Pre-Raphaelite Gazette: The Penkill Letters of Arthur Hughes (1967), and Prelude to the Last Decade: Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the Summer of 1872 (1971). He edited the text of William Michael Rossetti’s PRB Journal (1975) and commandeered two double numbers of Victorian Poetry for William Morris and Rossetti in 1975 and 1982. He produced the four volumes of the Dictionary of Literary Biography (1983-5) that dealt with Victorian novelists and poets. His final magnum opus was the much needed new edition of The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (2002-10), seven volumes of which were published after his death. Fredeman served as President of the Victorian Section of the Modern Language Association of America. He was also a founder member and first vice-president of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals and a member of the editorial boards for Victorian Poetry, Victorian Studies and the Journal of Publishing History. In addition he was co-editor of the Journal of Pre-Raphaelite & Aesthetic Studies, 1978-91, co-chair of the Canadian University Committee of the Editorial Boards, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1986-1999, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. We are grateful to Luke Fredeman for his help in preparing this introduction.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

Desdemona's Death Song: a fragment

細節
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Desdemona's Death Song: a fragment
oil on canvas laid on board
16 x 14 ½ in. (40.5 x 36.8 cm.)
來源
William Michael Rossetti and by descent to his daughter
Mrs Helen Rossetti Angeli.
Given by Mrs Angeli to W.E. Fredeman, 1963.
出版
H.C. Mariller, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: An Illustrated Memorial of his Art and Life, London, 1899, p. 196.
V. Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonné, Oxford, 1971, vol. 1, p. 151, no. 254H.
Christie's, London, Important British Art cat., 24 November 2004, p. 25, under no. 4.
W.E. Fredeman et al (eds.), The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Cambridge, 2002-10, vol. IX, p. 677.
展覽
Wolverhampton, Wightwick Manor, c. 1949-53, no. 57, lent by Mrs Rossetti Angeli.
注意事項
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拍品專文

Desdemona's Death-Song was an ambitious composition in which the heroine was to be shown singing the so-called Willow Song as she prepares for bed on the fateful night when she was smothered by Othello in a fit of jealousy (Othello, Act IV, Scene 3). Her faithful maid, Emilia, stood beside her, combing out her long hair. Rossetti was planning the work as early as March 1872, intending it for F.R. Leyland, the wealthy shipowner who was one of his staunchest patrons, and visualising a canvas 'moderate life-size' in scale. He continued to make studies over the next decade; a particularly fine one was sold in these Rooms on 24 November 2004, lot 4, and is now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (fig. 1). But the picture itself, though started, was never completed.

The present painting, showing the head of Desdemona, is a fragment cut from that unfinished canvas. Discussing the composition in his book Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer (1889), William Michael Rossetti wrote: 'He did not, I think, actually begin painting it on the canvas, but he must have come very near to so doing.' This is all the more puzzling given that William Michael himself owned our fragment. H.C. Marillier was more accurate in his great Rossetti monograph of 1899, observing that 'a beginning was made to paint the subject on canvas'.

In fact D.G. Rossetti himself had mentioned the unfinished painting. On 28 March 1882, during his last illness at Birchington-on-Sea, he had dictated a letter to the critic F.G. Stephens, who had written enquiring 'as to a subject picture'. Rossetti replied that he did indeed have one on hand, having 'designed and begun painting lately a good sized picture of Desdemona singing the Willow Song while Emilia dresses her hair'. 'Lately' implies that the fragment was one of his very last works. Within a fortnight he was dead, and the touching belief he had expressed to Stephens, that the picture would 'certainly be one of my best and most attractive things,' was never realised.

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