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Benedetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 324.
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Douglas, Theodore Watts-Dunton, II. 276-277.
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Sharp, DGR: A Record and a Study, 255.
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Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1, 145 (no. 247).
This collection contains 2 texts and images, including:
Private collection pastel drawing
Scholarly Commentary
Introduction
“The subject is said to be based upon a story by T. Watts-Dunton, though Sharp seems to have given the drawing its title” (see Surtees, A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1, 145 ). It may well be “a story” that the picture is based on a Watts-Dunton story, for no such story is known. The story alluded to is possibly the relationship between Watts-Dunton and the model for this picture, who seems to have been his mistress (see commentary for the related picture The Spirit of the Rainbow).
Production History
DGR seems to have made two copies of the picture, one the nude, the other with a “background and the ragged garb of the girl” worked into the picture by DGR's studio assistant Treffry Dunn. The latter is reproduced in black and white by Douglas in his biography of Watts-Dunton (facing page 276).