Sir Max Beerbohm

Catalogue entry

A01051 [from] ROSSETTI AND HIS FRIENDS (TWENTY-THREE DRAWINGS) 1916–17 [A01038-A01060; complete]
 
Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Walpole 1941.
Coll: Mrs Charles Hunter; from whom purchased by the Leicester Galleries; from whom purchased by Sir Hugh Walpole 1921.
Lit: Lynch, 1921, pp.146–50.

A series of twenty-three drawings, variously dated 1916 and 1917. Fifteen were lent by Mrs Charles Hunter to the Modern Loan Exhibition, Grosvenor Gallery, November 1917 (98); the complete series was first exhibited at the Leicester Galleries, September 1921 (1), in the order in which they are given here, again as Rossetti and his Friends. They were published in book form by Heinemann in 1922 as Rossetti and His Circle, possibly an allusion to Rossetti's Dante and His Circle, the second edition of his translations from the early Italian poets, published in 1874. The complete series of drawings was further exhibited in Paintings and Drawings of the 1860 Period, Tate Gallery, April–July 1923 (336), and was on loan to the Tate Gallery from June 1938. For further details, see below (artists represented in the collection will be fully discussed in the appropriate section of the catalogue).

(xiv) Inscr. 'Rossetti, in his worldlier days (circa 1866–1868) leaving the Arundel Club with George Augustus Sala.

  ‘Mr. Sala: “You and I, Rossetti, we like and we understand each other. Bohemians, both of us, to the core, we take the world as we find it; and as for our work, I give Mr. Levy what he wants and you give Mr. Rae and Mr. Leyland what they want, and glad we are to pocket the cash and foregather at the Arundel.”’

  and ‘[The monologue is apocryphal but not so the acquaintance - M.B.]’ below
  and ‘Max 1916’ b.r.
Pencil and watercolour, 14 3/4×10 1/2 (37·5×25·5).
Exh: Grosvenor Gallery, November 1917 (98, 13); Leicester Galleries, September 1921 (14); Tate Gallery, April–July 1923 (336, 14); on loan to the Tate Gallery from June 1938.
Repr: Rossetti and His Circle, 1922, pl.16 (in colour).

Sala (1828–96) was a successful journalist, particularly for the Daily Telegraph, of which J. M. Levy was proprietor. George Rae and F. R. Leyland were two of Rossetti's chief patrons.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I

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