Page:Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1904).djvu/110

 National Gallery) is the first, or very nearly the first, head that Rossetti drew from Mrs. Morris.

62.Mr. W. M. Rossetti here remarks that this is not quite correct. The person who drops the stone is of quite different physique from Morris, he says, and bears some resemblance to Val Prinsep. The head of Morris occurs, however, in the same design; he is putting his head out through a wicket, wearing a smile of hypocritical civility, whilst the other man, his accomplice, casts down the stone.

63.The painter's brother fails to recognise Morris in the last of the set at all.

64.A Belgian who was famous as a picture dealer in London from circa 1850 until 1875, when he retired and became Consul for Spain at Nice. He died at a great age about 1902, and his pictures, &c., were recently sold at Christie's.

65."Among the works of importance between which and the poems no direct connection can be traced, a few stand prominently forward. Formost [sic] amongst these is this triptych. The various divisions of this are curious as exemplifying the boldness with which, at this period, and subsequently, Rossetti threw off the trammels of Præ-Raphaelitism, and, while adhering to the mysticism, the recurrent phases of which mark his entire life, hesitated not to employ costume and effects which commended themselves by picturesqueness and beauty rather than by archaic correctness. In richness of colouring and in impressiveness this work remains one of the most striking oil paintings of Rossetti's middle period." Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, by Joseph Knight.

66.It has been pointed out by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, that this Gallery was not instituted by the Præ-Raphaelites in 1849, but that it began a year or two