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Who is... Dante Gabriel Rossetti?
BEATA BEATRIX This painting reflects Rossetti's grief after the death of his wife, Elizabeth Siddal
Born on May 12, 1828, (the same year as Jules Verne) Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the son of an Italian émigré and scholar who encouraged all his four children to pursue the arts, which they did with varying degrees of success. Rossetti with Holman Hunt and Everett Millais set up the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.
Poetry and painting were Rossetti's twin loves to the extent that he could not concentrate on either enough to become a master. Medieval and Arthurian legends as well as the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare and Browning and women were recurring themes in Rossetti's works. Like all the Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti's work was also harshly criticised, only to be rescued by the writings of Ruskin.
Rossetti's personal life was as rich and colourful as his paintings and poems. He fell in love the beautiful but delicate Elizabeth Siddal who modelled for all the Pre-Raphaelites. He also fell hopelessly in love Jane Burden, who was the wife of his business partner William Morris. He, however, married Elizabeth, who died of an overdose of laudanum soon after delivering a stillborn child.
Wracked with guilt over his wife's death, Rossetti dramatically buried his poems with her, only to cause quite a scandal later when he asked friends to exhume the body to retrieve his poems. He also fell in love with the vivacious Londoner Fanny Cornforth.
Rossetti withdrew from friends and took to collecting exotic animals. Wombats were a great favourite and his pet Wombat, Top, would sleep on the centrepiece of the table and was apparently the inspiration for the Dormouse in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
Robert Buchanan's attack on Fleshly School of Poetry convinced the paranoid Rossetti that everyone was out to get him. Alcohol and drug abuse claimed Rossetti on Easter Sunday on April 9, 1882.
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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