Inspired by artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s passion for wombats, every Friday is Wombat Friday at Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. “The Wombat is a Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness!” – Dante Gabriel Rossetti . You can follow #WombatFriday on Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood’s Facebook page.
At the end of The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1886), William Michael Rossetti shared some of his brother’s notes and thoughts. They are delightful insights into the artist’s mind and I’d like to share a few here today.
*Thinking in what order I love colours, found the following:–
1. Pure light warm green.
2. Deep gold-colour.
3. Certain tints of grey.
4. Shadowy or steel blue.
5. Brown, with crimson tinge.
6. Scarlet.
Other colours (comparatively) only lovable according to the relations in which they are placed.
*Picture and poem have the same relation to each other as beauty does in man and woman: the point of meeting where the two are most identical is the supreme perfection.
*Poetry should seem to the hearer to have been always present to his thought, but never heard before.
*A woman may have some little mercy for the man she has ceased to love, but she has none for the memory of what he has been to her.
*Seek thine ideal anywhere except in thyself. Once fix it there, and the ways of thy real self will matter nothing to thee, whose eyes can rest on the ideal already perfected.
*In receiving an unjust insult, remember that you can afford to despise it; who has been guilty of it can only despise himself for the act. Thus the advantage is yours.