"The Blue Bower" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

The Blue Bower

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

1865

Oil on canvas

84 x 70.9 cm.

Collection: Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham

Rossetti has objectified his painting by calling it "The Blue Bower," but it is really a portrait of his model and mistress, Fanny Cornforth. [Commentary continues below.]

Photograph (by kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery, London, when the painting was featured in their "Pre-Raphaelite Sisters" exhibition, 17 October 2019 – 26 January 2020) and text by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

Everything in the painting tends to establish Fanny's identity and enhance her particular kind of beauty. The blue cornflower-patterned background, the cornflowers strewn in the right foreground, even the matching blue decoration she wears in her hair, seem to spell out her surname. The small Japanese koto that she plays suggest her role in his life at present: that of courtesan, the entertaining geisha, the mistress.

The predominant colour and the choice of instrument are also right on trend: artists were beginning to be fascinated by Japanese culture, and the fashion for blue-and-white china, Japanese ornaments and so on, marked this culture's growing influence on later nineteenth-century Aestheticism.

Yet, with all this, Fanny looks very English in feature, colouring and even expression. There is a slight abandon in her thick wavy hair and her loose voluptuous gown, and her eyes are not cast down modestly as a geisha's might be, but watchful. From every point of view, composition, colour and character, it is a fascinating and very beautiful work.

Comments added by Simon Cooke

Though nominally a portrait, the painting is better understood as an example of Rossetti’s celebrations of love. This is one of those depicting sensuality (Eros), showing a bower where lovers traditionally met; others represent spiritual love (Agape). Rossetti expresses Cornforth’s sexuality by emphasising her fleshly face and figure while framing her in flowers and floral patterns, so reinforcing the traditional notion of women as the exemplars of nature and natural generation; in classic feminist terms, Fanny is objectified. However, Rossetti does allow her some personality: her facial expression suggests petulance and irritation, and she plucks on the strings without showing any interest in what she is doing as she waits for her lover to arrive. Rossetti was heavily influenced by Japanese woodblocks and ceramics, and the composition alludes to Japanese culture in the form of the stringed instrument, a koto, and in the flatness of the floral pattern in the background. These ingredients combine to create a complex, synthetic design in which courtly love is fused with Pre-Raphaelite exactitude and the Aesthetic notion of Beauty as an end in itself. In part narrative and in part poetic stasis, it is ultimately a dazzling piece of decorative art.

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Created 28 October 2019