Rossetti: Painter and Poet by J. B. Bullen (review)
- Rossetti: Painter and Poet by J. B. Bullen
The end of J. B. Bullen’s erudite and lavishly illustrated biography of Dante Gabriel Rossetti concludes by declaring that the poet-painter’s most significant posthumous legacy was “a carefully plotted map of the structure of the emotional life, an anatomy of desire.” In making this claim, Bullen argues that Rossetti’s complex works must be assessed as a group rather than individually, because his works achieve more than the sum of their individual parts. Considered as a group, however, his is “a magnificent achievement, one that was unmatched in British art” (261). This summation of Rosset-ti’s career in poetry and pictures (as well as translation, design, and book illustration) shapes the curve of Bullen’s approach to biographical writing, weaving Rossetti’s life story tightly with his art and poetry. This is a tricky feat for a biographical approach, especially in 270 pages, but Bullen succeeds.
This biographical approach is not novel, but the interpretation it advances is compelling and insightful, presented in prose that will appeal to both academics and the general reader. The biographer is helped by the large-format layout of the book and its generous reproduction of 189 paintings, mostly by Rossetti but also by major influences (both historical, including Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo; and contemporary, including William Holman Hunt, Elizabeth Siddal, andJames McNeill Whistler). Quotations from Rossetti’s poems and translations are presented alongside the biographical commentary and given as much prominence as most of the pictures in the page layout. While scholars would no doubt prefer to have facsimiles of poems in their original manuscript or print form rather than a block of magnified quotation, the prominent display of poetry alongside pictures underlines Bullen’s critical investment in Rossetti’s inter-artistic vision. The layout also complements some deft close analysis, especially of “Jenny” (1848) [End Page 539] and “Nuptial Sleep” (1869). Bullen focuses on Rossetti’s representation of sensuality and beauty. He does not pay sustained attention to other issues more prominent in recent years, such as Rossetti’s relationships with editors, publishers, and patrons; his Anglo-European influences; his family circle; or his approach to religion. Nonetheless, Bullen’s study is rich and knowledgeable, combining close argument with a sense of the breadth of Rossetti’s work. Following a long career of influential studies on art and literature (including The Pre-Raphaelite Body: Fear and Desire in Painting, Poetry, and Criticism [1998]), Rossetti maps Bullen’s own broad and detailed vision of the importance of his subject.
Rossetti’s life is presented as a tense and sometimes uncertain negotiation between art and reality. All studies of the Pre-Raphaelites, and especially of Rossetti and Siddal, find it difficult to separate legend from fact (see, for example, Jan Marsh’s The Legend of Elizabeth Siddal [1989]). Bullen understands this tension to be a structuring principle of Rossetti’s aesthetics—as in his act of “creating” Jane Morris through his many representations of her and in his vexed personal relationship with her (200). Indeed, this tension structures the biography Bullen has written. Bullen pays most attention to Rossetti’s three most prominent models and lovers—Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, and Morris—onto whom he imaginatively projected his sensual imaginative vision, as well as his anxiety, distress, frustration, and remorse. (Christina Rossetti’s sonnet “In An Artist’s Studio” [1856] is cited twice as an accurate assessment of her brother’s compulsive depiction of his model-lovers not as they were but as they “filled his dreams” [l. 14].) Dante Gabriel Rossetti is presented as a proto-Freudian who boldly articulated both desire and distress in the face of female beauty—although Bullen overstates the opposition between that response to beauty and conventional middle-class values. Bullen pays particular attention to Rossetti’s habit of triangulating his erotic desires with other men, as when he and fellow artist George Boyce simultaneously enjoyed an affair with Annie Miller.
Bullen’s treatment of Rossetti’s relation to women differs from the ideologically sharpened...
