“The Rose of Dawn” by James Smetham, 1821-89

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The Rose of Dawn

James Smetham, 1821-89

c.1872-77

Oil on canvas

24 x 14 inches (61 x 35.5 cm)

Private collection.

The subject is taken from Alfred Tennyson’s 1842 poem “The Vision of Sin.” These lines from the poem are inscribed on the original frame:

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And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn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 was a favourite poet of Smetham’s, as he was for many Pre-Raphaelite artists, and a popular source of subjects for them. Tennyson’s medieval subjects, particularly his Arthurian poems, were especially popular with the Pre-Raphaelites. In this composition a solitary youth is seen standing on the height of a mountain range on the edge of a precipice and looking heavenwards towards the misty dawn.

[Click on the image to enlarge it.]

There does not appear to be any path to allow him to continue his ascent. He is clothed in medieval attire, removing any consideration that it could be a contemporary subject. In Tennyson’s poem the man’s only hope for salvation is provided by God, whose divine light is symbolized by that of dawn (Casteras 62). As John Christian has noted: “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…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 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’”(50).

This is one of the works that was rejected by the Royal Academy in 1877. Disappointment as its rejection was one of the reasons Smetham entered the downward spiral of mental instability that plagued him for the remainder of his life. Smetham painted at least three versions of this subject, but this is the most finished. One of the other versions is in the collection of Oxford Brookes University.

Bibliography

Casteras, Susan P. James Smetham: Artist, Author, Pre-Raphaelite Associate. Aldershot, U.K.: Scholar Press, 1995.

Christian, John. The Forbes Collection of Victorian Pictures.” Vol. 3. London: Christie’s (February 20, 2003) cat. 215, 50.

Last modified 23 March 2022