The Bower Meadow: study of dancing girls

 Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Date: 1872

Materials: Black and red chalk

Rhythmic harmony

Soon after his return from Kelmscott in October 1871, Rossetti began work on an oil painting to be called 'The Bower Meadow' (Manchester City Art Gallery).  

Using a canvas which already bore a landscape background painted in the company of Hunt at Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1850, he devised a clever composition, balancing seated and dancingfigures in a rhythmic harmony of complementary reds and greens.

Rare nude study

For the lesser figures of the dancing figures, Rossetti made one of his rare studies from the nude, in black chalk (Private Collection): a tracing of this in red chalk, now rather faint after long being folded beneath the stronger image, appears at the right side of this sheet.

From this Rossetti developed one of his liveliest groups in coloured chalk; bothdrawings bear inscriptions of gift to his friend, the watercolourist G. P. Boyce.