+ Expand

Description: The Rose of Dawn 'At last I heard a voice upon the slope Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?" To which an answer peal'd from that high land, But in a tongue no man could understand; And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn God made himself an awful rose of dawn' - Tennyson, 'The Vision of Sin' signed 'J Smetham' (lower right) and signed and inscribed '"Rose of Dawn"/by James Smetham./Alfred Smetham/Cavendish' (on a fragmentary label on the reverse) oil on canvas 24 x 14 in. (61 x 35.5 cm.) PROVENANCE Edmund Bates, 1879. with The Stone Gallery, Newcastle, 1968-74. with The Fine Art Society, London, from whom acquired by the present owner in 1981. LITERATURE S. Smetham and W. Davies (eds), Letters of James Smetham, London, 1991, p. 307. M. Bishop and E. Malins, James Smetham and Francis Danby: Two 19th Century Romantic Painters, London, 1974, pp. 44, 50 (other versions), 52, pl. 14. S.P. Casteras, James Smetham: Artist, Author, Pre-Raphaelite Associate, Aldershot, 1995, pp. 26, 60-2, 162, illus. pl. 14 and in colour facing p. 116. EXHIBITION Possibly in D.G. Rossetti's studio, 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in 1878. New Haven, Yale Center for British Art, James Smetham, 1994. London, Christie's, James Smetham, 1995, no. 28. NOTES According to Susan Casteras, the picture was 'conceived in 1872 and finished a few years later.' There are at least three versions, all of which were included in the Smetham Exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art in 1994, but the other two, which are still in the possession of the Smetham family, are smaller. Inspired by Tennyson's poem 'The Vision of Sin', the picture is one of Smetham's more symbolist productions, expressing the spiritual turmoil and anxious heart searchings that were so typical of the man. Throughout his life Smetham found Tennyson a source of delight and solace. 'Took down Tennyson', he wrote in January 1864, 'glanced at the fly-leaf - "J. Smetham, 1843". That book has a charm for me that no other book but the Bible has. It is like moonlight and music and the shores of old romance and the "light that never was on sea or land". I know by heart, if not by spontaneous memory, every line of his poems. The days of my youth are enfolded in their scent, as the scent of violets hidden in the green. My memory kindles over them; my blood runs more quickly; my nerves thrill, and love and joy, even through the dusky shades that in places hang over the past, are recalled' ( Letters, pp. 130-1). Nonetheless, Smetham seems to have come to the conclusion that the flights of fancy represented by The Rose of Dawn were not really for him; he was better off with his feet on the ground. 'I am glad', he wrote in a letter of 1875, 'to have been gradually forced down from Roses of Dawn to the Foxglove and Rabbit dingles and dells, to Aylmer's field. If it succeed we will be in no hurry to get to the heights again, for the study of nature among the wild briar and the vine and the twisted eglantine is so soothing and sweet' ( Letters, p. 307). These ruminations seem to have been inspired by the work of John Crome, which he discusses in the earlier part of the letter. The Rose of Dawn was one of several pictures that were rejected by the Royal Academy in 1877. It was the final straw for Smetham, who had long suffered from lack of confidence and professional disappointment, and he experienced a mental and physical collapse from which he never recovered. His friend D.G. Rossetti, who had given him moral support for years, went to great lengths to find buyers for his pictures in order to help his family. A selling exhibition of Smetham's work was held in Rossetti's studio in 1878, and The Rose of Dawn may well have been included. Certianly it was one of twelve pictures that were sold to the Leeds art dealer Edmund Bates in 1879, again on Rossetti's initiative.