Via our Facebook page:

An unusual Pre-Raphalite double bill! March 13th 2 pm. Manchester Art Gallery. Illustrated talk by Mira Meshulam about William Holman`s Hunt`s house in Jerusalem – built 1876. Then Act One of `Scapegoats,` new play by Deborah Freeman in rehearsed reading. Director Ariella Eshed. Tickets – 0161 235 8888. Same event… on March 15th in London. For info go to www.tik-sho-ret.co.uk

(bodycolour on paper)
1878
Courtesy The Fitzwilliam Museum - Link

Coloured chalks on paper
Signed with the artists monogram and dated 1869
43.20cm wide 52.00cm high (17.01 inches wide 20.47 inches high)
Provenance:
Leonard Rowe Valpy
Canon Valpy, his sale, Christies, Saturday May 19th 1906, lot 146, £508
Sotheran
Courtesy The Leicester Galleries - Link

1869 - 1871
241mm x 151mm
Pen and brown ink and ink wash, on paper.
Bequeathed by James Richardson Holliday, 1927

Birmingham Museums and Art Galleries - Link

I apologize for my silence on this blog. Life intrudes sometimes, and distracts me from my always and forever passionate pursuit of all things Pre-Raphaelite. While you are waiting, let me distract you with something lovely.

My friend Christine subscribes to English Home magazine. In their current issue, they feature an article on home-dec fabrics where they feature the fabrics on a stunning redheaded model. This image blew me away, and I had her husband Lee scan it for me. To me, with the blue fabric and the red hair, it looks like the model from The Soul of the Rose by Waterhouse meandered past the gardens on her way back into her manor.


Click to see larger of course.

The weather has been unusually cold and yesterday’s snow made my little neighborhood look like a different and more enchanting place.   I loved yesterday.  It was a day filled with exhilarating romping in the snow with my children until night fell and we literally tumbled indoors feeling exhausted and content.   Then the night became one of those glorious winter nights where everything is so cold and beautiful outside while I was cozy and comfortable within.  Cuddled in my favorite quilt (made by my grandmother) I read some of Rossetti’s poetry.  I’ve decided to share some of my favorites:

Sudden Light

I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so,
Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time’s eddying flight
Still with our lives our love restore
In death’s despite,
And day and night yield one delight once more?

The Card-Dealer

Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
Yet though its splendour swoon
Into the silence languidly
As a tune into a tune,
Those eyes unravel the coiled night
And know the stars at noon.

The gold that’s heaped beside her hand,
In truth rich prize it were;
And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
With magic stillness there;
And he were rich who should unwind
That woven golden hair.

Around her, where she sits, the dance
Now breathes its eager heat;
And not more lightly or more true
Fall there the dancers’ feet
Than fall her cards on the bright board
As ’twere an heart that beat.

Her fingers let them softly through,
Smooth polished silent things;
And each one as it falls reflects
In swift light-shadowings,
Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
The great eyes of her rings.

Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov’st
Those gems upon her hand;
With me, who search her secret brows;
With all men, bless’d or bann’d.
We play together, she and we,
Within a vain strange land:

A land without any order,—
Day even as night, (one saith,)—
Where who lieth down ariseth not
Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
A land of darkness as darkness itself
And of the shadow of death.

What be her cards, you ask? Even these:—
The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
Skilled to make base seem brave;
The club, for smiting in the dark;
The spade, to dig a grave.

And do you ask what game she plays?
With me ’tis lost or won;
With thee it is playing still; with him
It is not well begun;
But ’tis a game she plays with all
Beneath the sway o’ the sun.

Thou seest the card that falls,—she knows
The card that followeth:
Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
As ebbs thy daily breath:
When she shall speak, thou’lt learn her tongue
And know she calls it Death.

The Dark Glass
Not I myself know all my love for thee:
How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
To-morrow’s dower by gage of yesterday?
Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
And ultimate outpost of eternity?

Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
And veriest touch of powers primordial
That any hour-girt life may understand.

I've featured Baba Studio before on my blog, but they've struck gold again (and always do!) with their prototype new Evelyn De Morgan wrap, and Burne-Jones corset (left model, picture 2, click picture to see larger).

Sadly, it is my understanding that they haven't successfully found a way to produce the Burne-Jones corset for available sale, but they are working on making a new line of Pre-Raphaelite high quality wraps for sale in their store soon.

Baba Studio has a really great graphic arts eye for knowing what artworks will work in what mediums, and that knowledge really shines through in this corset and wrap.

Elger, In the South (Alassio)

Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto

Ian McQueen, The Earthly Paradise (BBC commission)

Sir Andrew Davis conductor

Jennifer Pike violin

BBC Symphony Chorus

Wednesday, 10 March 2010

7.30 p. m.

Barbican Hall

London EC2Y 8DS

(020) 7638 8891

www.barbican.org.uk

(for a better look at the lovely work, please click on the image)

Arthur Hughes @ ArtMagick

http://www.arthurhughes.org/