Description: Surtees offers the following description: âA young woman kneels on
the floor, turned to the left; her head is turned round and rests on her left shoulder, looking
down; the arms are extended downward, hands tightly clasped. In the fireplace beside her, a
waxen male figure is tied to a stake. Upper right in a gallery (or at a window) a boy looks
down at her and points to the leftâ (
A Catalogue Raisonné
, vol. I, 123).
Copyright: Property of Mark Samuels Lasner
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
The drawing illustrates the central conception of DGR's ballad âSister Helenâ. Like the sketch for the ballad âTroy Townâ, this constitutes part of a true âdouble work of artâ. This drawing is an unfinished sketch, but a completed drawing âwas done to illustrateâ the poem (see Fredeman, Correspondence, 70.2). This double work is unusual, as is âThe Blessed Damozelâ, because in all of DGR's other double works the poem was done for the picture rather than vice versa.
The date of the drawing is important for determining whether it was made to illustrate the ballad or whether the ballad was written for the drawing.
Production History
Surtees dates it conjecturally 1870 but a finished sketch was certainly done much earlier, as his letter of 11 January 1870 to Barbara Bodichon shows (see Fredeman, Correspondence, 70.2). DGR seems to have given the finished drawing to Ruskin and was unhappy in 1870 to find that he could not longer locate the picture.
Literary
The companion work is DGR's Sister Helen .
Bibliography