Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/295

 to works of imagination. Within these limits his critical faculty was admirable, not deeply penetrative, but always embodying the soundest common-sense. His few critical essays are excellent. His memory was almost preternatural, and his knowledge of favourite writers, such as Shakespeare, Dante, Scott, Dumas, exhaustive. It is lamentable that his soundness of judgment should have deserted him in his own case, and that he should have been unable to share the man of genius's serene confidence that not all the powers of dulness and malignity combined can, in the long run, deprive him of a particle of his real due. He altered sonnets in ‘The House of Life’ in deference to what he knew to be unjust and even absurd strictures, and the alterations remain in the English editions, though the original readings have been restored in the beautiful Boston reprint of Messrs. Copeland & Day. His distaste for travel and indifference to natural beauty were surprising characteristics, the latter especially so in consideration of the gifts of observation and description so frequently evinced in his poetry.

All the extant pictorial likenesses of Rossetti, mostly by himself, have been published by his brother in various places. One of these of himself, aged 18, is in the National Portrait Gallery, London. No portrait so accurately represents him as the photograph by W. and E. Downey, prefixed to Mr. Hall Caine's ‘Recollections.’ A posthumous bust was sculptured by Madox Brown for a memorial fountain placed opposite Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk. Another portrait was painted by G. F. Watts, R.A. A drawing by Rossetti of his wife belongs to Mr. Barclay Squire. Exhibitions of his pictures have been held by the Royal Academy and by the Arts Club. His poetical works have been published more than once in a complete form since his death.

The National Gallery acquired in 1886 his oil-painting ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’ (1850), in which his sister Christina sat for the Virgin. His ‘Dante's Dream’ (1869–71) is in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool. But with very few exceptions his finest works are in private hands.



ROSSETTI, LUCY MADOX (1843–1894), painter, was the only daughter of Ford Madox Brown by his first marriage, and half-sister of [q. v.] Her mother's maiden name was Bromley. Lucy was born at Paris, 19 July 1843; her parents brought her to England in 1844, and, after her mother's death in 1846, her father definitely established himself in England. She showed no special aptitude for art until in 1868 the failure of one of Madox Brown's pupils to execute a piece of work led her to volunteer to supply his place, and her success induced her father to give her regular instruction. A watercolour drawing, ‘Après