THE LAST OF THE ROSSETTIS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 18066, 5 April 1919, Page 4

THE LAST OF THE ROSSETTIS.

(“ Daily Telegraph.”) After living nearly to the age of Titian, the last of the original preRapliaelitos is dead—William Miciiael Rossetti—the faithful clerk and secretary of a movement in English art, which, if it lives no longer in its primal attributes, rostered that earnestness and truth of practice summed up in the single word sincerity. Danto Gabriel Rossetti, the dreaming idealist; Holman Hunt, the reforming zealot; and Millais, the gifted executant, were a trio fired by Ford Madox Brown to clear art of the slipshod and tho shirk, and to bring the thoroughness of work again into lino with tlio inspired perseverance of tho Early Florentines. In 1818 Dante Rossetti was twenty, Holman Hunt twenty-one' and Millais a lad of nineteen. To them were shortly joined Thomas Woolner, tho sculptor, James Collinson, a painter who, on his retirement, was succeeded by Walter Doverell (dead at twenty-six in 1854), Frederick Stephen, trying to paint then, but destined to becorno the Nestor of art critics, and Dante’s younger brother, William Michael, who had obtained a clerkship in the Inland Revenue at fifteen in 1815. Tho movement grew, and attached to it many later names and manifestations, hut the above were the original pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Now all are dead, and it is only a few days ago that Fairfax Murray died, who worked as a promising boy in Danto Rossetti’s studio long after tho Brotherhood had ceased to hold its periodic meetings. With him wont the last but one of that little band of mourners which gathered at tlio grave of Rossotti at Birchington thirty-seven years ago, and it is still a pathetic fact to ho recalled that William Michael Rossetti then supported his aged mother at the little funeral. Christina, his sister, and tho inspired poetess, died in 1894. As the historic witness of tho movement W. M._ Rossetti rendered a valuable service in stating concisely its doctrine and purpose. These, in liis words, were simply : 1. To have genuine ideas to express; 2. To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them ; . 3. To sympathise with what is direct, and serious, and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-advertising, and learnt by rote; 4. Cliiofost of all: to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues. Such a manifesto seems trite to-day, and it can all be found in tlio lucid “Discourses” of Sir Joshua Reynolds, but in 1848 English art had become the prodigal son of the old tradition. London in tho year following was privileged to seo at Hyde Park Corner the first of only two pictures by Gabriel ever publicly exhibited in tlio metropolis in his lifetime. “Tho Girlhood of Mary,” and in the last months of 1850 appeared the famous “ Germ,” which Williamson edited and for which Gabriel wrote the sonnet on the cover, and other verso influenced by Browning. It also contained tlio richlycoloured drawing by tho artist of “The Laboratory,” showing a Lucrezia Borgia visiting an arch-poisoner. Lasting for only four numbers, tho surviving copies of'“The Germ” have becorno the coveted prey of collectors. The Rossettis inherited their fiery energy from their father Gabriel, Italian poet and patriot, who fled to this country after the Neapolitan revolution in 1821. He was a. forceful authority upon the poems of Dante, giving to them a “ mysticopolitical ” interpretation now followed by French critics. Their mother was the sister of that Dr John Polidori who was Byron’s physician. Although tho genius of Dante Gabriel, both poet and painter, and of Christina, that exquisite poetess of “ Tho Goblin Market,” overshadowed tho high literary qualities of Michael, lie has a niche of bis own. Ho was a man of infinite patience and untiring industry, with the great and lasting quality of winning and holding friendship. Charles Lamb used to poke fun at himself in liis gentlo essays on his life as a Civil servant, but liis letters reveal liis unwearying diligence and sense of high duty. W. Michael Bossetti was a lesser Lamb, yet zealous equally. Both proved that literary and clerkly industry can be compatible, the truth being that men of boundless energy can do many things well, and frequently use one form of oloso occupation ns an incentive to, and recrcntion from, another. So ho found time to he interested in his official work, and nlso to write a valuable hook of reminiscences, to do a eommomffible translation in blank verso of “ The Inferno.” and at the age of eighty (nine years ago) t-o write on “ Dante and his Convito.’"