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An Artist and his Model

Richard Aste on July 29, 2010

So, now that you know Rossetti's Silence is on view for a limited time in the Museum's Beaux-Arts Court, let's enhance your visit by getting to know the artist, his model, and the story behind this late Victorian masterpiece.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was born in London, where he attended Henry Sass's Drawing Academy and the Antique School of the Royal Academy. Bored with the Academy's traditional program, he joined the progressive studios of Ford Madox Brown and later William Holman Hunt. In September 1848 Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and John Everett Millais challenged the Royal Academy's hold on young artists by founding the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters seeking to revive the simplicity and realism of early Italian Renaissance art. Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelite pictures were criticized for their crude design, proof according to critics of the painter's lack of technical training. Fearing future censure, Rossetti vowed to never exhibit publicly in London again, and by 1852 the original Brotherhood had ceased to exist.

In the 1860s, while painting his first pictures of single female figures, Rossetti fell under the spell of Titian, Palma Vecchio, and the great Venetian masters of voluptuous female flesh. His brushstrokes broadened, replacing what he had described as the "stipple in the flesh" of his earlier, painstakingly detailed Pre-Raphaelite compositions. His head-and-shoulders portraits in chalk like Silence sold well, and by 1870 he was devoting himself almost entirely to representations of the ideal woman, often in the form of Jane Morris. Rossetti's later works were embraced by the Symbolist painters, who shared his interest in painting dreamy, introspective women lost in silent meditation and mystical inwardness.

Portraits of Jane Morris (1839-1914), by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) and J. R. Parsons, From an album of photographs posed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1863. V&A 1738 & 1741-1939.

Jane Burden Morris (1839-1914), the face of Silence, inspired numerous works by Rossetti and his friends, among them the painter-poet William Morris whom she would marry in 1859. Jane was a remarkable beauty, destined to play a major role in Rossetti's idealized and symbolic portraits of “stunners”—beautiful women shown at close range in often exotic settings.  In 1869, the American writer Henry James described her as having "a thin pale face, a pair of strange, sad, deep, dark Swinburnish eyes [a reference to the poems of the late Victorian writer Algernon Charles Swinburne], with great thick black oblique brows, joined in the middle and tucking themselves away under her hair." Jane, the daughter of a humble stableman, was discovered by Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones in an Oxford theater. Thanks to her captivating looks, she was spared a life of poverty and a future in domestic service. Through Morris she was educated privately, mastering French and Italian as well as the piano.



Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, 1828-1882). Silence, 1870. Dry pigment (pastel or chalk) on two sheets of joined wove paper, 41 7/8 x 30 3/8 in. (106.4 x 77.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Luke Vincent Lockwood, 46.188

In Silence, Rossetti captures Jane's beauty as well as her character; she was, according to contemporary accounts, an unusually silent woman.

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Silence on View

Richard Aste on July 28, 2010

Beginning today, Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Silence, one of the Brooklyn Museum's finest European works on paper, will be on view for the first time in nearly 40 years in the third-floor Beaux-Arts Court (the European paintings gallery).

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, 1828-1882). Silence, 1870. Dry pigment (pastel or chalk) on two sheets of joined wove paper, 41 7/8 x 30 3/8 in. (106.4 x 77.2 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Luke Vincent Lockwood, 46.188

The Pre-Raphaelite painter-poet described Silence, a large scale drawing of a beautiful brunette deep in thought, in a letter to his model-and rumored mistress-Jane Morris: "Silence holds in one hand a branch of peach, the symbol used by the ancients; its fruit being held to resemble the human heart and its leaf the human tongue. With the other hand she draws together the veil enclosing the shrine in which she sits."  In Victorian England, the abstract idea of silence was often linked to mysticism, Neoplatonic philosophy, and even death (Eternal Silence), themes that preoccupied Rossetti later in life, particularly after 1862 when his wife and principal model Elizabeth Siddal took her life with an overdose of laudanum.

In 1865 Rossetti commissioned a series of photographs of Jane Morris posing in the garden of his London home, Tudor House. Three years later, he began a series of formal drawings of her, often for future paintings. Silence, however, was executed in 1870 as a finished, independent work of art. In 1872 the drawing was sold behind Rossetti's back while he was convalescing from a breakdown in Scotland. Four years later he bought back Silence and sold it for £210 (today $6,500). By 1946 it was with one Luke Vincent Lockwood, who presented it to the Brooklyn Museum, where it was last exhibited in 1971.

For the next six months, New Yorkers will have a rare opportunity to see a Rossetti masterpiece on paper, nestled in the Beaux-Arts Court's north wall between paintings of equally reflective women-Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Siena-from Renaissance Europe and America. (In 1870 Rossetti was looking at Renaissance portraits of Venetian women for inspiration.)  Because of the sensitive nature of the drawing's medium (dry, crumbly pastel or colored chalk) and support (two sheets of horizontally joined wove paper), Brooklyn's Senior Paper Conservator Toni Owen has approved the presentation of Silence in the Court for no more than six months; it will be shown under significantly dimmer lights than those employed for paintings.

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5 Reasons to See Caillebotte By 5 July

Judith F. Dolkart on July 2, 2009

Almost every day that the Caillebotte show has been open to the public, I have been in the galleries—to ponder the works, to give tours, and to talk to our fantastic guards about visitor response. (The guards can tell you how I plague them.) While the installation of an exhibition offers incomparable, exhilarating joy as you work with the exhibition designer and the art handlers to create a distinctive visual narrative, the time spent in the galleries during the run of the show follows shortly thereafter on the fun scale. (Loan paperwork predictably comes in at the bottom of the scale.) Interactions with our visitors—from Caillebotte initiates to die-hard aficionados—are great treats because they prompt fresh observations.

So, with time running out for these face-to-face discussions—the show closes on 5 July!—I urge you to come out here and to let us all know what you see—enter your observations here on this blog or on our digital comment book in the exhibition.



Gustave Caillebotte @ Brooklyn Museum via pixonomy on Flickr.

Here are five reasons to come to see this exhibition:

1. A Brooklyn Exclusive!—Brooklyn is the final stop on this tour and the only American venue for this exhibition. Works by Gustave Caillebotte are rare in American museums—even for collections that are otherwise very rich in Impressionism. We have two at Brooklyn, and this makes us very lucky as I soon discovered when I went looking for more to add to our presentation. Most of the paintings in this exhibition come from private collections, so you will likely not see another significant gathering of works by Caillebotte in New York again very soon.

2. And a Journey to France—As Caillebotte moves from Paris to the French countryside and back to Paris, follow his move from early works executed in the studio to those painted on the spot before the motif. Caillebotte paints a France in flux: the newly reconstructed French capital with its broad avenues and regularized façades—the Paris we know today; coastlines developed with getaway homes for the well-to-do; and suburbs caught between leisure pursuits and a burgeoning heavy industry.

3. Art and Design—An avid competitive yachtsman, Caillebotte revolutionized sailboat design, and we are lucky to have six half-models of his designs in the exhibition. Listen to Tom Jackson, Senior Editor of WoodenBoat, eloquently describe the particularities of Caillebotte’s innovations on our cell phone guide. As scholars have noted, Caillebotte’s engagement with yachting prompted complete conceptions as he designed, built, sailed, and, finally, painted his many boats as they cut through the currents of the Seine or quietly bobbed at his dock. In this way, Caillebotte was like Claude Monet who planted elaborate gardens at Giverny and then painted them.

4. Daring Subject Matters—With The Floor Scrapers—one of two paintings devoted to this subject—Caillebotte established his reputation as a painter to watch when he made his debut at the second Impressionist exhibition in 1876. Many conservative writers disliked such scenes of urban labor, but critics allied with the avant-garde applauded the subject drawn from daily life. And Caillebotte’s Factories at Argenteuil (1888) marries a distinctively modern subject with bold paint handling—listen to Paul Tucker’s cell phone commentary on this one, he says it far better than I can.

5. Painter and Patron—Caillebotte played a critical role in the early days of Impressionism as he financially supported his fellow artists and helped to organize their landmark exhibitions. As one of the most significant early collectors of Impressionism, Caillebotte owned now-iconic works by his fellow painters. When he died prematurely in 1894, his collection of paintings by his Impressionist peers passed to the French state and now forms one of the most important core collections at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. You can catch a glimpse of The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette (1876) by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Caillebotte’s Self-Portrait at the Easel (1879). Notably, Caillebotte paints Renoir’s work in a very distinctive manner, but I will let you discover this on your own!



Caillebotte's Ladies Wear Hats via Trish Mayo on Flickr.

And please do let us know what you observe! Can’t wait to see what you see!

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