Beau Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti is one of the most famous images of the 20th Century.
The picture is a portrait of Rossetti’s late wife, Elizabeth Siddal in the character of Beatrice Portinari in Dante’s Vita Nuova.
The picture we inherited looked completely dismal, a dark and dirty print in a good frame. It was not liked here and left with the other rejected pictures rather than considered for restoration.
I finally decided to clean it, thinking that the frame was stunning and may fit a different picture.
The first indication that this wasn’t a waste of time was the DGR initials scratched on the back and dated 1868.
With clean glass and the dust removed it looked much better so I took a hi resolution image and looked at it using photoshop.
It appears to be a watercolour image not an oil painting but Rosetti did produce many variations on the original piece which supposedly wasn’t completed until 1870, two years after the date on this picture.
It is exactly the same size as the oil painting and appears to be a unknown variation, a colour test possibly since the clothes are a different colour as are many other minor parts of the image.
John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, seen together in this image, were good friends and worked together on many projects.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded by Rosetti and others associated their work with John Ruskin, whose influences were driven by his religious background.
In 1855, John Ruskin who was 36 yo at that time began to subsidise Liz Siddal’s art career and paid her £150 per year in exchange for all the drawings and paintings she produced.
A rare lithograph of Liz Siddal is also part of our collection.
All of our images have been digitally restored bringing them back to perfect condition, they are absolutely stunning. You can purchase prints of them all at our Etsy Art Gallery 2020 in original, A4 and in some cases A3 sizes at very reasonable prices. Please check this out, we need every sale to enable us to restore the originals and stop their further deterioration..