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Lot Essay
A study for Rossetti’s 1887 Joli Coeur (Manchester City Art Gallery), the present drawing depicts the laundress Ellen Smith. One of Rossetti’s ‘stunners’ and muses, she also sat for other artists of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, including Edward Burne-Jones, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, Simeon Solomon and George Price Boyce, until her marriage in 1873 when she appears to have stopped modelling.
The study differs slightly in pose from the finished painting: here the silhouette comes from that of the bridesmaid on the far left of The Beloved (1865-66, Tate Britain), also modelled by Smith. In the painting of Joli Coeur, the angle of the head is slightly different, moving away slightly from that of the bridesmaid, and she also wears a spiral-shaped mother-of-pearl brooch in her hair. This was a studio prop which Rossetti often used to adorn his models - Marillier describes it as 'so common that it almost represents a signature'.
The first owner of the drawing was Fanny Cornforth (1835-c.1906), once Rossetti's main model and, a few years earlier, his muse, steward and mistress. Like many other works, this one was given to her as payment. After the painter's death in 1882, the drawing was presented at the short-lived Rossetti Gallery which she opened on Old Bond Street with her husband John Bernard Schott, where pieces from her collection were exclusively exhibited and put up for sale.
The drawing was then acquired by Constantine Alexander Ionides (1833-1900), Rossetti’s great patron and collector of Victorian art. It was not included in the 1,156 paintings, drawings and prints which he bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum after his death – a group which included masterpieces by Delacroix, Millet and Degas, Georges Frederic Watts, Burne-Jones and Rossetti himself. It remained in the family until after the publication of Virginia Surtees 1971 catalogue raisonné.
It later came into the renowned collection of the designed Yves Saint Laurent, and was sold in his sale at Christie’s Paris, 23-25 February 2009, lot 92, where it was purchased by the present owner.
The study differs slightly in pose from the finished painting: here the silhouette comes from that of the bridesmaid on the far left of The Beloved (1865-66, Tate Britain), also modelled by Smith. In the painting of Joli Coeur, the angle of the head is slightly different, moving away slightly from that of the bridesmaid, and she also wears a spiral-shaped mother-of-pearl brooch in her hair. This was a studio prop which Rossetti often used to adorn his models - Marillier describes it as 'so common that it almost represents a signature'.
The first owner of the drawing was Fanny Cornforth (1835-c.1906), once Rossetti's main model and, a few years earlier, his muse, steward and mistress. Like many other works, this one was given to her as payment. After the painter's death in 1882, the drawing was presented at the short-lived Rossetti Gallery which she opened on Old Bond Street with her husband John Bernard Schott, where pieces from her collection were exclusively exhibited and put up for sale.
The drawing was then acquired by Constantine Alexander Ionides (1833-1900), Rossetti’s great patron and collector of Victorian art. It was not included in the 1,156 paintings, drawings and prints which he bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum after his death – a group which included masterpieces by Delacroix, Millet and Degas, Georges Frederic Watts, Burne-Jones and Rossetti himself. It remained in the family until after the publication of Virginia Surtees 1971 catalogue raisonné.
It later came into the renowned collection of the designed Yves Saint Laurent, and was sold in his sale at Christie’s Paris, 23-25 February 2009, lot 92, where it was purchased by the present owner.