Silence 1870

Curator: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, rendered this delicate graphite drawing titled "Silence" around 1870. Editor: Well, that title rings true. There’s a quiet stillness about the subject, a pensive mood radiating from the figure seated in what seems a richly ornamented armchair, doesn't it? Curator: Absolutely, the very essence of Romantic melancholy, almost a whisper captured on paper. Her pose is so studied, and her downturned gaze hints at an interior world we can only glimpse. There is also that tactile fabric; it demands to be touched and somehow consumed as sensation. Editor: I'm especially drawn to Rossetti's rendering of the fabric. The drape is magnificent – each fold meticulously studied, almost obsessive. It speaks of labor, the slow, careful building of visual texture. And let's not forget that even graphite has a material history, mined, processed, formed. Curator: Ah, yes, every artistic choice carries within it so many journeys, visible and invisible. Looking closely, I feel it is the ambiguity in her expression that enthralls me – a mix of sadness, perhaps contemplation. You almost long to reach out to touch the edge of her world, and it touches yours back. The labor of that emotion must not be understated. Editor: Agreed. And it also has a clear resonance with Victorian societal expectations, this ‘feminine ideal’ perpetually bound, by corsets but also decorum. But if the subject herself remains somewhat restrained, even blank, Rossetti's feverish attention to the rendering, almost to a manic point, of the cloth adds another dimension; it could reflect anxieties related to consumption itself. Curator: Consumption, a theme perhaps more vital than we understand, where material weight is emotional weight; and silence, it appears, has the capacity to house multitudes. What an odd journey this tiny space opened in us! Editor: Indeed, Rossetti forces us to consider the act of looking, the very stuff that seeing is made of, and the subtle politics inherent in representing ‘femininity’ at that precise historical juncture. A silence packed with things unspoken, but profoundly felt.