Rossetti, Dante Gabriel

(born May 12, 1828, London, Eng.—died April 9, 1882, Birchington-on-Sea, Kent) British painter and poet. Son of Gabriele Rossetti and brother of Christina Rossetti, he trained at the Royal Academy but vacillated between painting and poetry. As an informal pupil of Ford Madox Brown, he absorbed Brown's admiration for the German Nazarenes. In 1848, with several friends, he formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters treating religious, moral, and medieval subjects in a naturalistic style.

Rossetti expanded the Brotherhood's aims by linking poetry, painting, and Social Idealism and by treating “Pre-Raphaelite” as synonymous with a romanticized medieval past. When his oil paintings were severely criticized, he turned to watercolours based on literary works, which he could more easily sell to acquaintances, and became very successful. The group broke up in 1852, but Rossetti revived it in 1856 with Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris. After the death of his long-ailing wife in 1862, possibly by suicide, literary themes gave way to pictures of women, particularly Morris's wife, Jane. His poetry, including the sonnet sequence “The House of Life,” was widely admired. He broke with Morris in 1875 over his love for Jane and spent his later years as an alcoholic recluse.

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