Rossetti

Rossetti is an illustrated art book by Lucien Pissarro. Pissarro was a landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver and designer, here delving into the art of Rossetti. Excerpt: "The realism of the Pre-Raphaelites developed an absorption in detail, a "bit by bit" painting that was too often detrimental to the whole. In the best works of the early Italians the unity is, in spite of that attention to detail, admirably maintained—in other words the values are preserved. It was not long, however, before Rossetti quitted the path of the Pre-Raphaelites for a broader one. His paintings are entirely symbolistic, therefore literary. Given the personality of[12] an artist equally gifted as painter and poet, this need not surprise us. Indeed, seeing that Rossetti's pictorial conceptions are exclusively literary, he might be considered as more dominantly a writer than a painter; and this is the light in which he saw himself. We might say he painted "sentiments" and add that sentiment is the property of literature, but in Rossetti's case they have at least the advantage of intensity. They come straight from life, for all his art is more or less connected with the tragedy of his own existence. Herein lies the value of Rossetti's works as artistic creations."