A Collection Of Rare Letters By Pre-Raphaelite Painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti Are Heading For Auction
An extremely rare and unrecorded collection of 66 letters, many of which were written by Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti, are due to be sold by Shropshire auctioneers Trevanion & Dean.
According to Antiques Trade Gazette, 17 of these letters were written by Rossetti. The remaining letters were written by other eminent Victorian artists of the time, and include correspondence by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, George Frederick Watts, Sir Edward Poynter, Laurence Binyon, Valentine Cameron Prinsep, William Strang, Robert Macaulay Stevenson, John Macallan Swan, Alphonse Legros, and Dante’s beloved brother William Michael Rossetti.
The letters were all sent to the Ionides family who were of Greek descent and dedicated patrons of the art world, and the vast majority of these consist of correspondence with Constantine Alexander Ionides, an individual who bequeathed more than 1,000 pieces of art to the Victoria & Albert Museum after his death in 1900.
The letters from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the other Victorian artists demonstrate the poignant relationship that these individuals shared with their patron, with the Ionides family actively keeping the artists in the loop with regard to pieces of art that they had commissioned, and sometimes offering up ideas for minor changes.
Rossetti the salesman – important and unrecorded letters from Pre-Raphaelite patron’s collection discovered in house clearance @trevanion_dean @aaronauctioneer @CTrevanion https://t.co/d7pFwgQXuF pic.twitter.com/FlyoniRdKs
— AntiquesTradeGazette (@ATG_Editorial) August 17, 2018
In one of the letters that Dante Gabriel Rossetti sent to Constantine Ionides, the artist suggested dimensions for a painting that he was going to commence for Ionides, and then asked for the rather large sum of 700 guineas for this piece of work, an amount that would equate to around £300,000 today.
To prove that this should be an acceptable sum of money to pay for the painting, Rossetti noted that another patron who went by the name of Mr. Graham had paid him nearly three times that amount for his La Ghirlandata painting, in which the flame-haired Alexa Wilding had sat for.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti also added that his Beatrice painting, which portrays his wife Elizabeth Siddal, had been sold for a staggering 1,050 guineas.
“Mr. Graham paid me 800 guineas for La Ghirlandata [now in the collection of art at The Guildhall Art Gallery, London], 1050 guineas for Beatrice [a work picture sold at Christie’s in 2012 for over £2.17m including premium] and 1150 guineas for The Blessed Damozel [now in Harvard’s Fogg Museum].”
Rossetti then went on to say that this list of prices that had been paid for previous paintings was simply to show Ionides that the amount of guineas the artist was requesting was surely reasonable.
“I mention these prices to show that the picture that I am proposing to you is proportionally low-priced.”
He also kindly offers advice in his letters as to how best to hang his paintings, including the best framing options.
The 66 rare letters from Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelite painters and Victorian artists will be officially auctioned on September 15 at Whitchurch.
