LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND.- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Victorian artist, poet and founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was one of the most original talents of his generation. For the first time in thirty years over 150 of the best examples of his work will be collected for a major retrospective exhibition called - Rossetti. The exhibition’s only UK showing will be at the Walker, Liverpool from 16 October 2003 to 18 January 2004, building on Rossetti’s long association with the city.

In 1882 the Walker was the first public gallery to buy one of his paintings, Dante’s Dream, and throughout his career Rossetti enjoyed the patronage of the wealthy Birkenhead banker George Rae. Significant paintings from Rae’s collection, including the Lady Lever Art Gallery’s Sibylla Palmifera and the Tate’s The Beloved will be reunited in this exhibition.

All aspects of Rossetti’s career are examined in the exhibition. Curator Julian Treuherz hopes to draw lesser-known areas of the artist’s work to the attention of a whole new generation of art lovers. "Rossetti’s later portrayals of women are his best known paintings but his early works, mostly on a small scale and often in fragile media such as watercolour have a freshness and experimentalism that gives an added dimension to the understanding of his work as a whole." 

The exhibition also includes examples of the picture frames, book-illustrations and bookbindings he designed.

Themes in the show include early drawings inspired by Romantic poetry; intimate portraits of the Pre-Raphaelite circle; watercolours and drawings evoking the legend of King Arthur; subjects from Dante; and later paintings on themes of love and death such as Dante’s Dream and The Blessed Damozel.

Rarely seen pieces will include a sequence of drawings of Elizabeth Siddall, Rossetti’s muse and wife plus a group photographs of Jane Morris, posed by Rossetti.

The photographs were probably taken to rehearse different compositions for paintings, and as such give an unusual insight into Rossetti’s use of photography alongside his more traditional preparatory sketches.

Curated by the Walker’s Victorian art specialist, Julian Treuherz, the show was created in association with the Van Gogh Museum and will tour to Amsterdam (27 February to 6 June 2004), however a number of works will be shown in Liverpool alone – among these are Found, Rossetti’s unfinished modern-life subject of a prostitute confronted by a former lover, and Lady Lilith, the embodiment of the femme fatale, both from the Delaware Art Museum.

The exhibition has been rigorously selected to concentrate on visual quality and will include works from American and German collections, some of which have not been seen in England for half a century and many were never publicly displayed during Rossetti’s lifetime.

The Roman Widow, a major example of Rossetti’s late work, is being lent by the Ponce Museum, Puerto Rico where it has been since 1955.

Rossetti’s importance to the Victorian art scene was recognised by the German writer Richard Muther, who wrote in the 1890s that "a new stage in the culture of modern England dates from the appearance of Rossetti. He borrowed nothing from his contemporaries and all borrowed from him".

This innovative approach was born of his Italian ancestry, literary bias and idiosyncratic art training. He rebelled against the restrictions of the Royal Academy, along with his Pre-Raphaelite colleagues, rejecting accepted standards of "correct" drawing in order to imbue his work with intense emotion and expressional force.

These emotions are also conveyed through the symbolism of the rich detailing in Rossetti’s paintings. Although languid female figures are his most famous subject matter, he incorporates flowers, animals and birds to portray important symbolic themes, from ethereal purity to earthly passions.

The resonance of these powerful images is reflected in the fact that Rossetti’s work is just as arresting and relevant to a modern audience as it was over one hundred years ago.

Unisys is generously sponsoring the exhibition. Brian Hadfield, Vice President and General Manager says "Unisys applauds the Walker for creating this outstanding exhibition. As a local employer, it matters to us to support Liverpool initiatives and so we are delighted to be a sponsor."