by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 19, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
William Holman Hunt shows Dante Gabriel Rossetti face forward, looking directly out from a blue field. The head is framed by a loosely painted oval rather than by a fully described room. His dark coat and red-brown neckwear gather beneath the face; the hair, eyes and beard hold the viewer's attention. The portrait appears to catch Rossetti as a young member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. Yet the oil painting shown here was made after his death, around 1882–83, from Hunt's much earlier 1853 coloured-chalk drawing. Birmingham Museums Trust identifies the oil as accession 1961P33 and explains that two stages of making lie behind the single image. [1] [2]
The Birmingham oil is a small panel measuring 30.2 × 22.9 cm. Its historic title, Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti at 22 Years of Age, describes the youthful likeness rather than the date when Hunt made this physical painting. The painting's lower-right inscription includes “53”, an allusion to the source drawing's date. The National Portrait Gallery's extended catalogue says this mark even misled reviewers in 1884. A label that calls the oil simply “1853” therefore confuses it with its model. The original drawing and the later oil should be understood together, but remain distinct objects in different collections. [2] [1]
At a Glance
- ArtistWilliam Holman Hunt (1827–1910)
- TraditionBritish Pre-Raphaelite art
- Work or subjectPortrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- ContextIllustrated paintings guide
- Further readingArtist biography
The face and its painted surround
Rossetti's eyes meet the viewer almost levelly. Hunt has given them a dark rim and a direct focus that makes the small panel feel unusually close. The mouth is quiet, while the hair breaks into varied curls and reddish-brown strokes around the temples. The blue behind the head is stronger than a neutral studio wall, but it gives no specific place to identify. Hunt concentrates on a remembered face rather than on Rossetti at work with easel, book or pen.
The edges reveal something of the portrait's construction. The blue oval and shoulders end against pale margins rather than filling every part of the rectangular panel. The coat is carried to a soft, uneven lower boundary. That openness matters because the work retains the appearance of a close study even after being remade in oil. It does not claim the ceremonious distance of a full-length memorial portrait. The narrow format lets a viewer return repeatedly to the eyes and the changeable surface of the face.
Hunt's later panel should not be mistaken for a fresh sitting in the 1880s. Rossetti died in April 1882; the oil was Hunt's return to an image of him from decades earlier. A portrait can preserve a particular encounter while acquiring another meaning after the sitter is gone. The painting shows the young man Hunt remembered from the Brotherhood's formation, not Rossetti's appearance at the end of his life. [1] [2]
The 1853 drawing for Thomas Woolner
The source drawing is now at Manchester Art Gallery, inventory 1922.25. The National Portrait Gallery describes it as coloured chalks on cream paper, 28.6 × 25.9 cm, made in John Everett Millais's studio in Gower Street. Hunt inscribed it to fellow Pre-Raphaelite Thomas Woolner, who was in Australia, and marked it “Unfinished.” In the drawing, the face appears within a green vignette. The later oil substitutes the blue painted surround visible here. The close facial relationship is the reason the two are often conflated, but medium, colour, size, date and collection distinguish them. [2]
Watch: William Holman Hunt
Begin with Hunt’s paintings, then place his work alongside two fellow Pre-Raphaelite founders.
William Holman Hunt Paintings
An overview of Hunt’s paintings from TheHistoryOfArt video archive.
Watch on YouTubeThe inscription makes the drawing more than a generic preparatory study. It was addressed to Woolner as a “P R Brother,” a sign of the friendships and geographical separation within the circle. Hunt, Rossetti and Millais had helped form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848; by 1853, portraits could serve as records of people who shared its early ambitions. Hunt's portrait of F. G. Stephens offers an earlier and quite different example of a member of that network pictured at close range. Stephens leans over a chair; Rossetti's later oil has almost no visible activity beyond the face itself. [2] [3]
Why the date on the oil is deceptive
The oil's painted “53” does useful historical work: it tells a viewer that Hunt wanted the remembered encounter to remain connected to 1853. It is less useful as a standalone catalogue date. The National Portrait Gallery identifies the panel as a copy made early in 1883, lists exhibitions beginning at Liverpool in 1883, and notes that the 1853 mark led later viewers astray. Birmingham gives the broader 1882–83 dating and says the painting followed Rossetti's death. Taken together, these accounts support a simple distinction: the image was conceived in 1853; the oil panel was made about thirty years later. [2] [1]
The Birmingham record's title also says Rossetti was 22. Because the NPG dates the source drawing to 1853 and identifies Rossetti as born in 1828, that exact age should be read as part of the established title rather than used to calculate the sitting's year. Museum titles sometimes preserve older descriptions that do not fit every piece of later evidence. The page therefore uses the title for recognition while giving the object's actual chronology explicitly. [1] [2]
The oil entered Birmingham's collection by purchase in 1961, according to the museum's credit line. It can now be read alongside other images of artists looking back at their early circle. William Blake Richmond's later portrait of Hunt pictures the painter himself; Hunt's biography and paintings guide put Rossetti's friendship and the Brotherhood's beginnings in a wider career. What makes this panel distinctive is its double time: a youthful face first drawn for a friend, then painted again after that friend had died. [1]
The two backgrounds sharpen that double time. The NPG describes the 1853 chalk drawing as a head within a green vignette, made for Woolner while he was in Australia. The later Birmingham oil surrounds the same youthful face with a vivid blue field. The altered colour is a visible decision in the remaking, not merely a change of support from paper to panel. It encourages a comparison of how Hunt chose to present a memory: the likeness remains direct, while its setting becomes less like a page sent between friends and more like a self-contained painted image. Neither colour alone explains Hunt's grief or intention; the documented dates and dedication establish the personal connection. [2]
Discussion
Look closely at Portrait of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, then compare your reading with the documented history.
Reader Insights
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How do the date, medium and collection records shape that interpretation?
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References
- Birmingham Museums Trust asset record. View source.
- National Portrait Gallery portrait inventory. View source.
- National Portrait Gallery, Brotherhood history. View source.
