I have written about William Holman Hunt’s painting Isabella and the Pot of Basil many times before. I included it in a recent Wombat Friday…
The Portrait is a poem I’ve wanted to write about for a while now, because writing about things is how I unpack and explore them.…
Friends sometimes say it’s strange that I can simultaneously be optimistic and bubbly while also being captivated by art filled with melancholy and death. I’m not sure how to answer except to say that I consciously choose to embrace life to the fullest and believe that my positive…
Saturday was the anniversary of Elizabeth Siddal’s death in 1862 and Sylvia Plath’s suicide in 1963. Both poets garner a lot of attention when February…
Literature is filled with fictional portraits. Visual art and the written word can intertwine in glorious ways. Dorian Gray’s mysteriously aging painting springs to mind…
Our Halloween revelry is over and now we honor our ancestors with the Day of the Dead. Throughout Mexico and the Southwestern U.S., this is…
Last week I posted Evelyn De Morgan’s Hope in a Prison of Despair (seen above) on the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood Facebook page. A happy byproduct of…
Many people hear about Elizabeth Siddal through dramatic anecdotes of her life, such as the serious illness she suffered as a result of posing in…
For those of us who admire Pre-Raphaelite art, Elizabeth Siddal is a familiar face. Her story is repeated often and frequently embellished. When beginning to…
In the early years of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, artist Walter Deverell discovered Elizabeth Siddal working in a millinery shop. After modeling for his painting Twelfth…
Pre-Raphaelites sought fidelity to nature in their works, recreating the natural world with painstaking attention to detail. They did not, however, limit themselves to realistic…
Upon the death of Charles Dickens in 1870, the artist John Everett Millais traveled to Gad’s Hill Place to make a sketch of the novelist…
The sum total of our greatest fears is the death of the self or someone we love. Since the beginning of time, humans have had…
When I was fifteen years old, my father taught me how to drive. I was eager, yet scared; I couldn’t believe that I had actually…
This week marks the anniversary of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s death in 1882. A founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Rossetti’s works capture his unique view of…
The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais is my go-to source when blogging about Millias’ works. Written by his son John Guille Millais,…
On this day in 1862, Elizabeth Siddal died. In many accounts of her, you will see her death described as suicide. Whether intentional or not,…
The tale of Thisbe comes from book four of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In ancient Babylon, the families of Pyramus and Thisbe live in separate houses that…
When it comes to ghost stories, the Victorians were absolutely the best. It was an era that birthed Industrialism and scientific discovery, yet people held…
After my recent post on Dante’s Divine Comedy, I’ve been thinking about metaphorical descents into the Underworld. The rather beautiful Greek word for descent is…
The Tower of London is marking the centenary of World War I with a breathtaking art installation called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red by…
Orpheus was given his lyre by the god Apollo and it was the Muses that taught him how to play. His gift for music enchanted…
“It is a subject from an old story of mine — a woman dying while her lover is painting her portrait” (Dante Gabriel Rossetti) This…
William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil is currently in the news with the recent announcement that the Delaware Art museum will be…
