Not long ago, Arbiter of Style Megan was editing our soon-to-be-reprinted monograph Rossetti—as in Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite painter/poet—when she came across the following sketch, created to honor the passing of the artist’s pet wombat:
Apparently Rossetti kept many exotic beasts as pets over the course of his life, but he reserved a special place in his heart for wombats. He even wrote a quatrain, called “Death of a Wombat,” to accompany the drawing:
“I never reared a young Wombat
To glad me with his pin-hole eye,
But when he most was sweet and fat
And tail-less, he was sure to die!”
On the basis of this work, we think Dante Gabriel Rossetti may be the greatest artist—and the greatest tragic poet—we’ve ever come across.
is this for reals? either way, I love it!