MAJOR WORKS OF THE YEAR

Literary: There are no literary entries in DGRDW for 1855. Apart from the single sonnet, “A Dark Day” (HL 68), sent to WA, WHH, and WBS, no other poem by DGR is mentioned in this year's letters. In Works, WMR places two further poems in 1855: “Beauty and the Bird” published in Poems, and “Dawn on the Night-journey,” first printed in CW.

Artistic: A highly productive year for which Surtees lists ten important watercolours, of which the whereabouts of four - The Annunciation, The Nativity, Dante's Vision of Matilda Gathering Flowers, and The Carol (S.69, 71-2, 79) - are unknown. With Arthur's Tomb (dated 1854, but as Surtees argues [S.73] almost certainly belonging to 1855), DGR launched the half-dozen gem-like Arthurian watercolours, the centrepiece of his early career. The influence of Malorian medievalism on DGR in turn influenced WM and culminated in the post-PRB aesthetic revival that spanned the next three years and included The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (1856), to which DGR contributed; the illustrations for the Moxon Tennyson and the mural decorations for the Oxford Union (both in 1857); and WM's The Defence of Guenevere (1858). Other than Arthurian, the subjects of the 1855 pictures are taken from three major sources: the Bible - Ruth and Boaz (S.70), The Passover in the Holy Family (S.78), and the two works cited above; Keats - La Belle Dame Sans Merci (S.76); and Dante - Dante's Vision of Rachel and Leah (S.74), Paolo and Francesca da Rimini (S.75), and the Vision of Matilda, already mentioned. Beyond the major watercolours, DGR also made portraits of RB, Louisa Jane Parke, Alfred C. Lyster, and the famous drawing of Tennyson Reading “Maud.” Arguably his finest illustration, The Maids of Elfen-Mere, was engraved for WA's The Music Master (see Plate 10b). This year also marks the commencement of Ruskin's patronage. The previous year, DGR observed that JR “seems to be in a mood to make my fortune.” Of the ten watercolours executed in 1855, JR either commissioned or acquired directly from the artist seven of them; and it was JR who introduced DGR to his next major patron, Ellen Heaton.