The true affinity of Mrs. Rossetti's style is to
historic painting — not to genre painting, or any
phase of "the sketchy" or "the picturesque."
Trained under the immediate influence of her father's
inventive mind and strong modes of thought and
V7ork, she has never needed to wander in search of
a starting-point, or waver and experimentalize as to
method and manner. Not contemplating in her earlier
years any personal practice of pictorial work, she
glided into it without any toilsome effort, by natural
predisposition and faculty, aided by surrounding in-



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124 ENGLISH FEMALE ARTISTS.
fluenceSy and, when once she had '^ made a beginning/'
by the authentic sense of a true self-expression* Her
pictures are simple and direct in handling, full and
harmonious in tone of colour : they are at unison .with
themselves, containing a c^ain singleness of spirit
throughout — not one quality in this respect, and a
differing quality in that other respect They are not
tediously vamped up, nor patchily assorted. The
subject, indeed, always presents itself to this artist
in a clear, concrete form: this impresses her de-
cisively once for all, and she follows it out, with no
substantial deviation from the first conception and
intention.
