Lunchtime tourism: Rosetti at Guildhall Art Gallery
Bob Vylan at Glastonbury 2025 showed how art and entertainment is often explosive in the political and cultural discourse. ‘Twas ever thus. Just take a walk into the Guildhall Art Gallery. Upstairs in the Victorian section you will find La Ghirlandata, Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s self-proclaimed “very best picture,” painted 152 years ago in 1873.
Her eyes are achingly beautiful; you could stare into them all day. The model, Alexa Wilding, has a long, ivory neck and an oval face with soft, plump lips. On her shoulders fall feathers of flaming hair. The picture is a verdant green that complements the passionate red. She is playing a harp, the artistic symbol of love. Above, two angels watch over our enchanting figure.
Rosetti painted it at Kelmscott Manor, where he shared a tenancy with the famous arts and craft master William Morris. He also shared Jane, Morris’s wife, in a menage a trois. Now, our themes of angelic beauty suddenly become erotically charged. Scandalous, even. And the angels’ model is Morris’s 10-year-old daughter May. Discuss.
Rosetti was a pre-Raphaelite painter, a group that detonated Victorian society. They rejected the symbolic art that came with Raphael around 1500, instead creating bright, bold and meticulously detailed paintings that celebrated nature, legend and myth. They were seen as dissolute, and blasphemous.
Victorian family paintings often depict the father standing, wife seated and children obediently playing at their feet. Message: strict social order; women, know your place. But in La Ghirlandata, Alexa challenges all this.
She was a working-class girl who lived in Warwick Lane near Newgate – Rosetti leapt out of his cab one day when he saw her beauty drifting along the Strand. He paid her a retainer and, well, that’s almost all we know.
She had two children, but no father is recorded. Was it Rosetti? Later writers characterise the women in his life as interesting, challenging paramours while Alexa was just… someone he painted. But why not judge for yourself? Look at the painting and ask: is she a mannequinor a spurned lover? Is she rejecting a predatory artist or taunting him? Is the hidden ring finger deliberate? These are Lunchtime Tourism questions to answer.
Rosetti gave us a literary legacy as well as an artistic one. He coined the word ‘stunner’ to describe a beauty who arrested the senses. In 152 years’ time, no one will be talking about Bob Vylan. But they will still be gazing at the stunner in Guildhall. And so should you.
• The Guildhall Gallery is free. Introductory tours take place at 12.15 and 13.15 daily except Monday. To book a tour guide go to guideconcierge.com or email [email protected]