The Blessed Damozel, by William Shakespeare Burton (1824-1916). Oil on canvas. 56 x 43 1/2 inches (142 x 110.5 cm). Collection of the Salford Museum & Art Gallery, Salford, Greater Manchester, accession no. 1934-32. Reproduced from Art UK for purposes of non-commercial study.
This late work by Burton is based on his friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti's most famous early poem "The Blessed Damozel," the first version of which Rossetti had begun by 1847, although it was revised repeatedly for publication. It was initially published in an early version in The Germ in 1850. In 1856 Wilfred Heeley, one of the editors of the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, persuaded Rossetti to contribute a revised version of the poem to their magazine. A more definitive version was used as the initial poem for Rossetti's long awaited collection of poetry, simply entitled Poems, first published by F. S. Ellis in 1870. Rossetti is known for his so-called "double works of art." In every other case, however, it was the painting that preceeded the poem with the single exception of The Blessed Damozel where the poem came first. As early as 1856 Thomas E. Plint, the famous Pre-Raphaelite patron and collector, had unsuccessfully tried to commission a version of this subject from Rossetti. Eventually in February 1871 William Graham commissioned a version that was not completed, however, until 1878. In December,1877, Graham also commissioned a predella for the painting showing the earthly lover lying on his back and gazing up towards his beloved in heaven. This is the version now at the Fogg Art Museum, The Harvard University Art Museums. In 1879 Rossetti commenced painting a slightly modified replica of the painting and its predella for Frederick Leyland that was completed in 1881.This version is in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
Burton's painting depicts very well the first stanza of Rossetti's poem, which is the subject generally chosen by artists:
The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
The blessed damozel, clad in white symbolic of her purity, leans over the gilded bar of heaven clutching the three lilies in her left hand. She is stretching out her arms and looking down at her beloved on earth. Heaven is depicted as a green landscape with flowers and trees and mountains and water in the background. Below the "golden bar of heaven" can be seen an image of the dove descending symbolic of the presence of the Holy Spirit. The use of different colours of marble is reminiscent of that seen in some Italian Renaissance churches. From 1868-76 Burton had lived in Italy, primarily in Florence, where white and green marbles were used in the construction of its churches.
E. Rimbault Dibdin in The Magazine of Art in 1900 preferred Burton's vision of the subject to the version painted by Rossetti himself:
In The Blessed Damozel Mr. Burton addressed himself to the seemingly hopeless task of realizing on canvas that wonderful poem of the boy Rossetti which the middle-aged man Rossetti himself painted in most memorable and convincing fashion. The result, however, has justified the attempt. In art there are many ways, and in the subtle spiritual grace of Mr. Burton's "Damozel" there is no trace of imitation of the lusty supersensual mediaevalism of Rossetti's picture. For most of us, when we have brushed aside prepossessions, the former will come much nearer expressing our own inner conceptions of the theme.[295]
Burton and Rossetti were friends of long-standing but were never particularly close. Although their times at the Royal Academy schools must have overlapped their friendship appears to have started after Burton made a sensation at the Royal Academy in 1856 with his The Wounded Cavalier. Burton became one of the founding members of the Hogarth Club in December 1858, showing that by this time he was integrated into the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Their friendship must have continued for longer, however, because Burton appealed to Rossetti for financial help after the birth of his first daughter on March 29, 1866. Two letters from Rossetti to G. P. Boyce, dated the 1st and 3rd of April, show that Rossetti had organized a £10 donation for "poor Burton'" to which Boyce had also made a contribution. (Rossetti, letters 66.66 and 66.67, 416). Letters from Rossetti to his patron James Anderson Rose from August 1866 show that he had arranged for Rose to buy a drawing from Burton (Rossetti, letters 66.138 and 66.140, 459-460). In a letter of August 21, 1866 from Rossetti to Charles Augustus Howell, he asked Howell if he could confidentially mention Burton's case regarding financial problems to John Ruskin. "Burton is in the most pitiably destitiute state, constantly coming on me in one form or another. I have done all I can in various ways, & am à bout de resources" (letter 66.142, 461). Burton is not mentioned, however, in any of Rossetti's surviving letters after 1866. William Michael Rossetti in his Reminiscences mentions that in his early manhood he saw little of him personally but that I "know him to be a painter of high aims, and of attainment insufficieintly recognized. One of his recent large pictures was taken, as I saw with much gratification, from the Blessed Damozel of Dante Rossetti" (226).
Burton was not the only member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle to do versions of The Blessed Damozel based on Rossetti's poem. A drawing of c.1860 by Rossetti's wife Elizabeth Siddal is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. A watercolour and gouache by Edward Burne-Jones of c.1856-60 is in the collection of the Fogg Museum in the Harvard Art Muuseums, Cambridge. This watercolour was commissioned by Thomas E. Plint, who therefore eventually obtained a painting of this subject, just not by Rossetti. An early unfinished oil sketch for this subject, intended as the right hand panel of a dyptych, had initially been commissioned from Edward Burne-Jones by Plint but never completed. This is now in a private collection. Burne-Jones also did a pen-and-ink drawing of this subject found in the so-called Little Holland House Album that he presented to Sophia Dalrymple in 1859. A painting by Byam Shaw of 1895 of quite a different composition is in Guildhall Art Gallery, London.
Bibliography
The Blessed Damozel. Web. 17 June 2024.
Cowling, Mary. "William Shakespeare Burton (1824–1916)". British Art Journal XV No. 2 (Winter 2014/15): 83.
Dibdin, E. Rimbault. "William Shakespeare Burton." The Magazine of Art XXIII (1900): 289-95.
Marillier, Haryy C. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. An Illustrated Memorial of his Art and Life. London: George Bell and Sons, 1899, 188-90.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Chelsea Years, 1863-1867. Ed. William E. Fredeman. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003.
Rossetti, William Michael. Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti. Vol. I. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906.
Created 17 June 2024