Portrait of Alexa Wilding, Profile to the Right by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

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Portrait of Alexa Wilding, Profile to the Right

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

Signed with a monogram and dated and dated 1866

Red and black chalk and wash on paper

17 x 12 3/4 inches, 43 x 32 centimetres

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Commentary by Peter Nahum and Sally Burgess

After the death of his wife, Elizabeth Siddal, in 1862, Rossetti lived in Chelsea where he was a neighbour and friend of Whistler. The aesthetic paintings and drawings he made here became a formative influence on the development of "art for art's sake" in Britain; his sensuous portraits of female figures evoking the art of the Venetian Renaissance. Dante Gabriel Rossetti chose a variety of voluptuous models during the 1860s to sit for him, including Alexa Wilding and his mistress, Fanny Cornforth. although Vuginia Surtees has not identified the sitter, she is, in our opinion, Alexa Wilding. This portrait head clearly compares to her likeness in Monna Vanna (1866), Veronica Veronese (1870-72) and The Bower Meadow (1871-72). Rossetti's stylised heads are naturally a poetic fusion of the ideal model and his mental picture of his muse.

Frederick Sandys had first met the Pre-Raphaelites in 1857 through his lampoon of Sir John Everett Millais' St Isumbras at the Ford, a print entitled The Nightmare, which contained caricatures of Millais, Rossetti, Hunt and Ruskin. Sandys was a superb draughtsman and a master of the pastel technique. It was he who encouraged and taught Rossetti to work in coloured chalks and it was no coincidence that Rossetti produced a series of strong chalk heads and full-length subjects in 1866, the year that Frederick Sandys stayed at his house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

Provenance: J. Knapp-Fisher; William Alwyn; his sale: Sotheby's London, The Alwyn Sale: Fine Eighteenth Century Drawings and Paintings, 14 November 1962, lot 100; L. S. Lowry RA (1887-1976); L. S. Lowry's estate; sold at: Christie's, London, English Drawings and Watercolours, 18 December 1984, lot 47; Private Collection, Canada, to 2000.

Exhibited: Manchester City Art Gallery, A Pre-Raphaelite Passion, The Private Collection of L. S. Lowry, April-May 1977, number 7; Milan, Academi Belle Arte and Abruzzo, Casa di Dante, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1984, number 269, illustrated page 260.

References

Nahum, Peter, and Sally Burgess. Pre-Raphaelite-Symbolist-Visionary. London: Peter Nahum at Leicester Galleries. Catalogue number 6.

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Last modified 27 June 2020