Passion and Worship, by Thomas Matthews Rooke, RWS (1842-1942). 1902. Pencil and watercolour with gum arabic, heightened with touches of gouache. 18½ x 24½ inches (47 x 62.2 cm). Private collection, image ©2000 Christie's Images Limited. Reproduced by kind permission (not to be downloaded; right click disabled).
Rooke's subject here is taken from "Passion and Worship," Sonnet VIII, in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "House of Life" sonnet sequence, first published in 1870 by F. S. Ellis in Rossetti's book simply entitled Poems:
One flame-winged brought a white-winged harp-player
Even where my lady and I lay all alone;
Saying: "Behold, this minstrel is unknown;
Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:
Only my strains are to Love's dear ones dear."
Then said I: "Through thine hautboy's rapturous tone
Unto my lady still this harp makes moan,
And still she deems the cadence deep and clear."
Then said my lady: "Thou art Passion of Love,
And this Love's Worship: both he plights to me.
Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:
But where wan water trembles in the grove
And the wan moon is all the light thereof,
This harp still makes my name its voluntary."
Rooke would have been familiar with the work of Rossetti through Edward Burne-Jones, for whom Rooke worked for many years as his principal studio assistant. Rooke's watercolour shows a pair of lovers seated on the grass, hands entwined, in a forest clearing near a stream "where wan water trembles in the grove." The "one flame-winged brought a white-winged harp-player" described in the poem are to the left of the composition. In Rossetti's own art a winged figure of Love figures prominently in a number of compositions, such as Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice, Love's Greeting, and Dantis Amor. Rooke, unlike Rossetti, was not both a poet and a painter. As the well-known collector Merton Russell-Cotes wrote of Rooke in his autobiography: "Rooke produced his poetry not in verse, but portrayed it in his pictures." (738).
Bibliography
British Art on Paper. London: Christie's (28 November 2000): lot 45. https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-1939055
Russell-Cotes, Merton. Home and Abroad: An Autobiography of an Octogenarian. Vol. II. Bournemouth: Herbert Russell-Cotes, 1921.
Created 18 January 2026