Dante Gabriel Rossetti created the original painting A Sea Spell just six years before his death in 1882. The original is part of the Fogg Museum collection at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. A sensitive oil painting created by a man torn apart by criticism and unrequited love. At the time Rossetti was suffering a mental breakdown, wracked by an addiction to alcohol and drugs – And yet he still managed to produce this beautiful work of art.

Dante Rossetti was a poet as much as he was a painter. His oil paintings reflect his romantic tendencies and were often relative to the sentimental sonnets he frequently wrote: And this oil painting is no exception. To this, many of his art works can be linked to the artist’s own personal (and often tormented) personal relationships. The poem for this oil painting ‘A Sea Spell’ reads thus...

Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree, While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell, The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea. But to what sound her listening ear stoops she? What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear, In answering echoes from what planisphere, Along the wind, along the estuary? She sinks into her spell: and when full soon Her lips move and she soars into her song, What creatures of the midmost main shall throng In furrowed self-clouds to the summoning rune, Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry, And up her rock, bare breasted, comes to die?

In the oil painting we see the beautiful maiden with her lute ‘shadowed in the apple tree’. The ‘sea-bird’ sits in the branches above her. Indeed, the woman seems to have her ear turned to ‘gulf-whispers’’: As if listening to them – Waiting to ‘echo’ what she hears.

This is a serene and romantic oil painting that could not fail to reflect its peaceful ambience wherever it was placed. The reproduction oil painting we offer is high quality and hand painted by skilled artists to exacting standards - It would be hard to be disappointed with this tranquil composition: Perhaps even impossible...