Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the
defining images of the Pre-Raphaelite era, is to be auctioned at Sotheby's in
London in November.
The drawing, in
coloured chalks, comes to the market for the first time in more than 40 years
and is expected to fetch up to £1.8 million.
Sotheby's Simon
Toll hailed Rossetti's "instantly recognisable" masterpiece.
"This is
one of the most important British pictures to be seen on the auction market in
many years," he said.
The drawing
"represents the artist at the zenith of his originality", Toll
continued.
"In many
ways it stands apart from much of the art created by Rossetti's contemporaries
as something new and otherworldly, that was unlike anything else that had been
seen before it."
Proserpine was
begun in 1878, and acquired by William Graham, the MP for Glasgow, in 1880.
Graham was
Rossetti's chief patron, eventually owning 35 of the artist's works.
The chalk
drawing is among five versions of the image in existence, including three in
oil and a watercolour replica.
The picture was
last seen on the art market in 1970 when it was sold by the Stone Gallery in
Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
No details are
available regarding its current owner.
The painting
centres on the myth of the goddess Proserpine, who was abducted by Pluto and
trapped in the underworld after eating pomegranate seeds.
Each year she
was temporarily released to return to her mother, Ceres. Her emergence from the
underworld is said to symbolise the coming of spring.
Jane Morris,
the Oxford-born wife of the artist William Morris and Rossetti's chief muse,
was the model for Proserpine.
Biographers
claim her own life bore similarities to that of the captive goddess, suggesting
she was caught between a loveless marriage and her intimate relationship with
Rossetti.
Auction record
The sale of
Proserpine coincides with a major Pre-Raphaelite retrospective, first held at
London's Tate Britain last year.
The exhibition
opened at Washington DC's National Gallery of Art earlier this year and can
currently be viewed at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
Earlier this
week, a painting by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones became the most expensive
pre-Raphaelite painting ever sold at auction.
Love Among the
Ruins sold for nearly £15m (£14,845,875) at the sale at Christie's London
auction house on Thursday
The sale easily
outstripped the top estimate price of £5m and set a new world record for a
piece by the British artist at auction.
Source: BBC
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