I’m very interested in the Pre-Raphaelites, so was excited to see the exhibition The Rossettis: Radical Romantics at Tate Britain. It focused on brother and sister Dante Gabriel Rossetti (painter) and Christina Rossetti (poet), and, for the purposes of this exhibition, Gabriel’s wife Elizabeth (painter), born and better known to us as Elizabeth Siddal.
The exhibition explored how the family’s background – their parents were scholars of Italian heritage, and their four children, Maria (writer), Gabriel (who later adopted the name Dante), Christina, and William (writer and co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) had unconventional lives and shared anti-establishment views. Their father, Gabriele, was a revolutionary who had to flee Italy, and passed on many of his ideas to his children.
‘Remember’ by Christina Rossetti
Both Gabriel and Christina published poems at an early age. Today, Christina is the better known poet: her verse was inspired by poetry, love and religion, and is often passionate and full of life. Gabriel’s admiration for less conventional artists led him to co-found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with his own brother William and several other artists; his own work was inspired by the likes of Dante and William Blake.
Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The inclusion of Elizabeth Siddal’s work here is interesting. I’m very glad her work is becoming better known and she is no longer seen as ‘just’ Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s muse. However I would be more interested to see how her background and experiences shaped her own work, rather than lump her in with the Rossetti family who had a very different upbringing. The exhibition, it must be said, does make a good case for her inclusion, showing how her work and Gabriel’s inspired one another, and the similarities between her poetry and Christina’s in terms of exploring women outside of the conventions of the time.
I really liked how the exhibition tried to dive in to the lives of the working class models that often featured in Gabriel’s paintings, as well as confronting the problematic portrayal of different cultures in his later works. Ultimately, the exhibition did a very good job in highlighting the Rossettis’ impact on art, literature and culture.