English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882 Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.  Related Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :. | The Girlhood of Mary Virgin | cropped version of Veronica Veronese | Writing on the Sand (mk28) | Proserpine (mk28) | The Beloved |
Related Artists:
Morgenstern, Christian
German, 1805-1867 German painter. After training from 1824 with Siegfried Bendixen (1786-1864) in Hamburg, he studied at the Kunstakademi in Copenhagen in 1827 and made sketching trips to Sweden and Norway. He then settled permanently in Munich. He was influenced in particular by 17th-century Dutch painters, notably Jacob van Ruisdael, the Copenhagen plein-air painters, the emerging Norwegian landscape school and the early Realist painters working in Munich, such as Johann Georg von Dillis. Morgenstern explored objective, pure landscape painting with intimate motifs in such works as Beech-tree Trunks in Fredericksdal near Copenhagen (1828; Hamburg, Ksthalle). He also painted scenes combining closely rendered foreground details with extensive,
Berghe, Christoffel van den
Dutch, approx. 1590-1645
Gustav Wentzel
(7 October 1859 - 10 February 1927) was a Norwegian painter. He was best known for interiors and domestic and rural scenes. His artistic style was associated with Naturalism and noted for accurate observations and attention to detail. Gustav Wentzel was born in Christiania. He was a pupil of painter Knud Bergslien (1879-81) of and Frits Thaulow in 1883. He also studied for a time in Paris at the Academie Julian in 1884 and at Academie Colarossi with Leon Bonnat and Alfred Philippe Roll (1888-89). Wentzel first public painting was exhibited in Albert Cammermeyer bookstore during the autumn of 1879. His painting Snekkersvennen, which had been rejected by the Christiania Kunstforening, led to a lasting dispute and the establishment of an exhibition organized by the artists themselves, which eventually became an annual event called Autumn Exhibition (Høstutstillingen) in Oslo. Among his paintings at the National Gallery of Norway are I fiskernaustet from 1881, Frokost from 1882, and Dans i Setesdal from 1887. Wentzel was decorated Knight, First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1908