Study for the Woodblock for the Moxon Tennyson of Lancelot and the Lady of Shalott
Date1856-1857
Artist
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(British Pre-Raphaelite painter, 1828–1882)
MediumBrown ink on paper
Dimensions4 1/16 x 3 1/2 in. (10.3 x 8.9 cm)
frame: 13 1/2 × 12 1/2 in. (34.3 × 31.8 cm)
frame: 13 1/2 × 12 1/2 in. (34.3 × 31.8 cm)
Credit LineSamuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
Object number1935-86
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextIn 1855, the publisher Edward Moxon contracted Rossetti, Millais, and Hunt to contribute illustrations to a new edition of the poems of Alfred Tennyson. The Pre-Raphaelite illustrations in this text were a radical departure from current practices. Rossetti challenged accepted methods of composition by pushing the subject matter so tightly into the foreground that at times his images verge on the abstract. Rossetti was particularly fond of Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott.” In this drawing and finished print, he depicts the moment when Lancelot gazes at the body of the Lady in her boat as she floats in front of Camelot, where various knights and ladies are assembled:
Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shalott.
