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Lot Essay
Found (Bancroft Collection, Wilmingham, Delaware) was Rossetti's only attempt at a modern 'moral' subject, conceived in accordance with early Pre-Raphaelite principles. A young farmer, taking a calf to a London market in the early morning, encounters a prostitute with whom he had been involved at an earlier date. Ashamed of her life, she turns away, pressing her head against a churchyard wall, while to the right the calf is held fast in the net which covers the farmer's cart, its victim status mirroring that of the 'fallen' girl. In the distance is Blackfriars Bridge, on the south-west corner of which, at 14 Chatham Place, Rossetti had lodgings from 1852.
Rossetti was making studies for Found as early as 1851, but the canvas was not started until 1854. He worked on it intermittently over the years as one patron after another commissioned it; but it was not really a congenial subject to an artist of his temperament, and gave him untold trouble. It was still unresolved at his death in 1882 although the concept had inspired a fine series of related drawings (see Surtees, op. cit. nos. 64 A-P).
The present sketch contains all the main elements of the composition - figures, brick wall with tombstones showing above it, calf and cart, distant bridge; but opinion is divided as to whether it is 'the first composition sketch', as the catalogue of the 1973 Rossetti exhibition suggests, or dates from a few years later. The black edging could place it after the deaths of Rossetti's Polidori grandparents in April and December 1853, or even that of his father in April 1854. Whatever the case, the drawing seems to be concerned with more than the picture's own formal elements. The firmly defined borders and the circles at upper and lower left corners suggest that Rossetti was also thinking of how it would look in its frame, one he would no doubt have designed himself.
Rossetti was making studies for Found as early as 1851, but the canvas was not started until 1854. He worked on it intermittently over the years as one patron after another commissioned it; but it was not really a congenial subject to an artist of his temperament, and gave him untold trouble. It was still unresolved at his death in 1882 although the concept had inspired a fine series of related drawings (see Surtees, op. cit. nos. 64 A-P).
The present sketch contains all the main elements of the composition - figures, brick wall with tombstones showing above it, calf and cart, distant bridge; but opinion is divided as to whether it is 'the first composition sketch', as the catalogue of the 1973 Rossetti exhibition suggests, or dates from a few years later. The black edging could place it after the deaths of Rossetti's Polidori grandparents in April and December 1853, or even that of his father in April 1854. Whatever the case, the drawing seems to be concerned with more than the picture's own formal elements. The firmly defined borders and the circles at upper and lower left corners suggest that Rossetti was also thinking of how it would look in its frame, one he would no doubt have designed himself.