The Laboratory - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
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Description
A 1849 watercolour by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, illustrating a scene from Robert Browning's poem about a woman commissioning a poison.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti produced this watercolour in 1849, during the early years of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The composition draws inspiration from Robert Browning's poem of the same name, which depicts a woman commissioning a poison from an apothecary to eliminate a rival. Rossetti captures the tension of the scene through the interaction between the two figures, who lean over a table cluttered with alchemical apparatus and vials.
The work displays the characteristic attention to detail and narrative focus that defined the early Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic. The woman, dressed in a gown of deep green and blue, leans forward with an expression of intense concentration. Opposite her, the apothecary examines a small object, his face illuminated by the dim light of the workspace. The inclusion of glass retorts and scientific instruments in the foreground provides a sense of period authenticity, grounding the literary subject in a tangible, physical environment.
Rossetti uses a palette of muted tones, punctuated by the stark red of the table covering, to create a sense of claustrophobic drama. The arched top of the composition suggests a window or a frame, drawing the viewer into the private, illicit transaction occurring within the laboratory. This piece represents an early exploration of the themes of jealousy, obsession, and historical narrative that would occupy Rossetti throughout his career. The handling of the watercolour medium demonstrates his technical skill in building depth and texture, particularly in the rendering of the fabric and the glassware. As a study of human motivation and moral ambiguity, the work remains a compelling example of the Victorian fascination with historical and literary subjects, interpreted through the lens of the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
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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
The Laboratory - 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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