Wheat and Flowers

Details

Date: 12.04.1853
Dimensions: 36.5 x 28.3
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: BrD34
Artist: Millais, John Everett, Sir (08.06.1829 - 13.08.1896)
Sitter: Munro, Alexander (26.10.1825 - 01.01.1871)
Credit notes: Frank Brangwyn gift, 1935

John Everett Millais drew this portrait of the sculptor Alexander Munro on 12 April 1853, when members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle met at Millais’ studio in Gower Street, London to draw portraits of each other to send to Thomas Woolner (1825-92), the sculptor and one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who had emigrated to Australia.
The occasion was prompted by Rossetti who had written in a letter to Woolner “Last night at my party, it was agreed that all your intimates should meet at a certain day and hour, the equivalent of which was to be found by you Australians…for some act of communication the nature of which was left to me to decide. I therefore fix that on the 12th of April…at 12 o’clock in the day, we shall each of us, wheresoever we be, make a sketch of some kind (mutual portraits preferable) – or for any who do not draw, some verses or a letter – and immediately exchange them by post.”
Those present at the gathering were Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, F.G. Stephens and Millais. Alexander Munro happened to call and according to Arthur Hughes “Millais, having finished his Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood subject, got Munro to sit, and drew him and afterwards accompanied him to the door with drawing in his hand, to which Munro was making some critical objection that Millais did not agree with. There happened to be passing at that time a couple of rough bricklayers fresh from their work- short pipes and all. Millais suddenly reached out from the doorstep and seized one, to his great surprise, and there and then constituted them judges to decide upon the merits of the likeness, while Munro , rather disconcerted, had to stand in the street with his hat off for identification.”
Unlike Millais’ other drawing of F.G. Stephens from that day, or Holman Hunt’s drawings of Rossetti and Millais, this drawing is not inscribed with a dedication to Woolner, so it seems likely that Rossetti did not send it to Woolner with the others.

Details

Date: c. 1879
Dimensions: 15 x 14
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D167iv
Artist: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Credit notes: A.H. Mackmurdo Bequest 1942

In 1874 Artur Heygate Mackmurdo ‘travelled to Italy with Ruskin’, some writers have interpreted this as him being guided by Ruskin’s writings but it is more likely he was an assistant to Ruskin during an extended trip to the area. Mackmurdo stayed in Italy for two winters and a summer between, most likely from 1874 to 1876. It may have been during this time that he ventured across to Switzerland to sketch the Lucerne woodbarn depicted here.

On Ruskin’s research trips his assistants would have been assigned particular buildings or artworks to record for Ruskin’s publications and lectures. Mackmurdo would have therefore been instructed in illustrated buildings and likely utilised those skills to execute this study.

Details

Date: 1863
Dimensions: 15.1 x 11.5
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: BrD44
Artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Sitter: Siddal, Elizabeth Eleanor (25/07/1829 - 11/02/1862)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1935

This study was for an oil painting now in the Tate Gallery (NO1729). It was posed for by the artist’s wife Elisabeth Siddall. The finished painting shows Siddal in virtually the same pose, though the dress in the oil is medieval in keeping with the subject, and the lips are open and the eyes are closed.

The theme of the painting is explained in a letter from Rossetti to the Hon. Mrs. Cooper-Temple (26 March 1871; letter in Pierpont Morgan Library) ‘There is little need perhaps for my dwelling further on the picture’s subject now that it is completed. You are well acquainted with Dante’s ‘Vita Nuova’ which it illustrates, embodying, symbolically, the death of Beatrice as treated in that work. It must, of course, be remembered, in looking at the picture, that it is not at all intended to represent Death … but to render it under the semblance of a trance, in which Beatrice seated at the balcony overlooking the City is suddenly rapt from Earth to Heaven. You will remember how much Dante dwells on the desolation of the city in connection with the incident of her death, and for this reason I have introduced it, as my background, and made the figure of Dante and Love passing through the street and gazing ominously at one another, conscious of the event, whilst the bird, a messenger of death, drops a poppy between the hands of Beatrice. She sees through her shut lids, is conscious of a new world, as expressed in the last words of the ‘Vita Nuova’: ‘Quella beata Beatrice che gloriosamente mira nella fascia die colui qui est per omnia soecula benedictus.’

The date at which the painting was begun is uncertain. According to Virginia Surtees, the generally accepted version that it was not begun till after Elizabeth Siddal’s death from an overdose of laudanum is incorrect. A letter from Rossetti to Ellen Heaton (22 Dec. 1863) mentions that he had ‘lately found a commencement of a life size head of my wife in oil, begun many years ago as a picture of Beatrice; it is only laid in and the canvas is in a very bad state, but it is possible I might be able to work it up successfully either on this or another canvas, and should like to do so if possible as it was carefully begun. The picture was to represent Beatrice falling asleep by a wall bearing a sundial; and I have pencil sketches for it as a half figure comprising the arms and hands’.

Details

Date: 1871
Dimensions: 55.6 x 76.5
Object Type: design
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: A158b
Artist: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Credit notes: Mackmurdo bequest, 1942

Halcyon House, Private Road, Bush Hill Park Estate, Enfield was designed and built by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo for his mother c.1875-1872. This architectural drawing shows the back elevation (south west) for Halcyon House with side view of the side gable end (north west), chimney and fenestrated gable ends, sash window and classical patterning. The house was demolished in 1968.

Details

Date: 1886
Dimensions: 30 x 20
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: BrD12
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1935

This study of a girl is preliminary study for ‘The Rose Bower’, the fourth of Edward Burne-Jones’s ‘Briar Rose’ series of paintings (National Trust). The drawing shows the head of a sleeping maiden, one of Beauty’s attendants, holding a musical instrument and seated on the ground by the bed of in which the princess lies. In the finished painting the girl has a much simpler hairstyle. The same figure appears in a simplifies variant of ‘The Rose Bower’ painting (gouache on canvas) in a private collection. Another slightly different varient of a girl’s head is in the collection of Hammersmith and Fulham Libraries.

‘The Briar Rose’ pictures originated in a series of painted tiles illustrating ‘The Sleeping Beauty’, designed by Burne-Jones in 1864 for Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The small scenes were subsequently enlarged and much-developed into several sequences of painting.

Material: pencil on paper

Pages

Archives

Categories