[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Artists —> The PRB and later Pre-Raphaelitism —> Dante Gabriel Rossetti —> Paintings —> Next]

The Day Dream

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

1880

Oil on canvas

H 158.7 x W 92.7 cm

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Accession number CAI.3

Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 1901

Rossetti wrote a poem for this painting, with the same title. It starts by noting new leaflets on the sycamore, even half-way through the summer, and ends, "She dreams; till now on her forgotten book / Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand." The daydreamer has escaped from the seasonal cycle and its vagaries into a world of her own, yet the fact remains that the blossom has fallen, suggesting that the first flush of youth, and love, is over.

Image acquisition and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Image released on Art UK under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND).

Related Material

  • The Rossettian Dream
  • Sarah Doyle's poem, "Impressions of Jane"


  • Victorian
    Web

    Artists

    D. G.
    Rossetti

    Paintings

    Next

    Created 1 November 2020