Roman de la Rose - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Description
A 1864 watercolour by Dante Gabriel Rossetti depicting a scene from the medieval poem 'Le Roman de la Rose', featuring a romantic encounter in a garden.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, produced this watercolour in 1864. The composition draws inspiration from the thirteenth-century French allegorical poem, 'Le Roman de la Rose'. The narrative concerns a lover who seeks a rose within a walled garden, a metaphor for the pursuit of courtly love.
In this depiction, the central figures engage in a moment of intimacy. The lover kneels before the personification of the rose, who leans forward to bestow a kiss. To the right, a figure plays a musical instrument, adding to the atmosphere of a medieval courtly scene. Rossetti employs a flattened perspective, characteristic of his interest in medieval manuscript illumination and early Renaissance art. The background features a repeating pattern of roses and foliage, which serves to compress the pictorial space and emphasise the decorative quality of the work.
Rossetti uses a palette dominated by warm ochres, deep greens, and muted reds. The figures wear period-appropriate garments, rendered with attention to textile patterns and textures. The work reflects the artist's preoccupation with romantic themes and his desire to revive the aesthetic values of the Middle Ages. By focusing on the emotional exchange between the figures, Rossetti creates a scene that feels removed from the industrial realities of nineteenth-century Britain. The work remains a clear example of his technical skill in watercolour, a medium he favoured for its ability to produce luminous colour effects. The attention to detail in the clothing and the surrounding garden elements demonstrates his careful study of historical sources, which he adapted to suit his own imaginative vision.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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Specific Features
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- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
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- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Roman de la Rose - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Artist Biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
He was born in London to an Italian political exile and named after the author of the Divine Comedy. His father was a professor of Italian at King's College. The household ran on poetry, politics, and argument. Rossetti wrote verse throughout his life and considered himself a poet as much as a painter.
His early paintings are small, bright, and meticulously detailed in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini have the flat, jewelled quality of medieval altarpieces. After 1860 the style changed. The paintings became larger, more sensual, and dominated by the face and figure of Jane Burden, who was William Morris's wife.
The relationship between Rossetti, Morris, and Jane is one of the more uncomfortable triangles in art history. Morris married her. Rossetti painted her obsessively. She modelled for Proserpine, La Pia de' Tolomei, and dozens of other works in which she appears as a mythological woman trapped in an unwanted situation. Whether the affair was physical remains debated. Morris, characteristically, said nothing publicly and channelled his feelings into wallpaper.
Rossetti buried a manuscript of his poems in his wife Lizzie Siddal's coffin when she died of a laudanum overdose in 1862. Seven years later he had the coffin exhumed to retrieve them. He published the poems. He was addicted to chloral hydrate by then and increasingly paranoid. He died in 1882, at fifty-three.
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