Exhibit Celebrates Woman as Muse, Temptress, Dreamer

For English artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), sensuous female beauties were a grand obsession. This obsession is revealed in the exhibit "Rossetti in the 1860s: The Blue Bower" at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. On view until May 6, the exhibit examines his richly colored Pre-Raphaelite portraits of women blessed with cupid's-bow lips, luxuriant hair and deep, hooded eyes. The main highlight of the show is "The Blue Bower," a masterpiece Rossetti executed in 1865 using his housekeeper and mistress Fanny Cornforth as his model. This painting is joined by 41 other paintings, drawings and prints by Rossetti and his contemporaries Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Gustave Courbet, James McNeill Whistler, Frederic Leighton, Frederick Sandys, Kate Bunce, George Frederic Watts and Arnold Bocklin.

According to museum organizers, Rossetti's nonnarrative portraits are considered to be some of the finest in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition. Curator Paul Spencer Longhurst described his femme fatales as "visionary, saturated with color and set in confined spaces, allowing the artist to concentrate on ever-increasing opulence, sophistication of hue and beguiling decoration." The luxurious fabrics and alluring pose of the sitter further heighten Rossetti's invitation to the viewer to gaze.

Focusing on works between 1860 and 1870, the exhibit explores Rossetti's artistic development in terms of style and medium, along with his personal relationships with the models who posed for him, including Cornforth, Elizabeth Siddal (whom Rossetti eventually married), Alexa Wilding and Jane Morris. It also examines how Rossetti, who was himself a poet, became infatuated with the poetic imaginings of a fabled past and drew inspiration from literary works like Malory's Morte D'Arthur and Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

The exhibit was organized by the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham, England. A fully illustrated catalog is available.

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