Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Woman in Yellow

1863

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

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Not on display

Artist
Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828–1882
Medium
Watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Frame: 585 × 494 × 50 mm
support: 406 × 305 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Bequeathed by Beresford Rimington Heaton 1940
Reference
N05233

Display caption

This intimate watercolour of Annie Miller is different in style from William Holman Hunt’s painting of her, The Awakening Conscience, made ten years before (which is on display in the 1840 Gallery). It reads less like a story and more like a poem or music. Miller is swathed in yellow in the manner of a Renaissance portrait to emphasise her ‘bodily beauty’, as Rossetti termed it, and the beauty of colour. A later oil version was named after the woman most famous for the enchanting power of her appearance, Helen of Troy.

Gallery label, February 2016

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Pre-Raphaelite

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