Drawing

c. 1860

A new course: powerful close-ups of women

Around 1860 Rossetti returned to oil painting, abandoning the dense medieval compositions of the 1850s in favour of powerful close-up images of women in flat pictorial spaces of dense colour; these drew not on medievalism but on the Venetian High Renaissance artists Titian and Veronese, and became a major influence on European Symbolism.

1861

Founding partner of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

In 1861 Rossetti, together with Morris, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, Philip Webb, Charles Faulkner and Peter Paul Marshall, became a founding partner of the decorative arts firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., contributing designs for stained glass and other decorative objects.

11 February 1862

Death of Elizabeth Siddal and his manuscripts in her grave

On 11 February 1862, two years after the wedding, Elizabeth Siddal died of an overdose of laudanum, the alcoholic tincture of opium; Rossetti sank ever deeper into depression and, when she was buried at Highgate Cemetery, interred the bulk of his unpublished poems with her, though he later had them dug up.

1871

Love for Jane Morris

In 1871 Rossetti fell in love again — with Jane, the wife of his friend William Morris; they became lovers, and Jane sat for him often.

June – September 1872

The breakdown of 1872: laudanum and Scotland

In June 1872, after the savage criticism of his poems, Rossetti suffered a mental breakdown in which he attempted unsuccessfully to kill himself with an overdose of laudanum. He spent nine weeks recuperating in Scotland and in September joined Jane Morris at Kelmscott, but spent his days in a haze of chloral and whisky.

9 April 1882

Died