Resumen de Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'Hamlet and Ophelia' and its patron
Two previously unpublished business letters have to come light concerning the 1865 commission by lawyer Andrew Tucker Squarey of artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti to execute a watercolor painting of the Shakespearean subject Hamlet and Ophelia. Rossetti had produced a number of works on Shakespearean subjects, a practice that was in keeping with the status allocated to the playwright by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the late 1840s. In 1858, he had produced a highly finished pen-and-ink drawing of Hamlet and Ophelia. The existence of a preparatory study for the later painting suggests that Rossetti began work on it in the same year that he was working on The beloved, an important piece commissioned by his longtime patron George Rae. Rossetti seems to have struggled with finishing Squarey's commission, and he persuaded Squarey not to allow the work to be exhibited until 1869. The painting can be seen almost as an aberration in Squarey's collection, as it appears he owned no other works by the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and few subject paintings.
