Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Portrait of Margaret Thompson

"Half-length figure. Head in profile to right, the dark glossy hair drawn down smoothly and falling in ringlets on either shoulder. Head and hair are carefully finished; shoulders, bust and chair-back are sketched." (Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonné, Oxford, 1971, vol. I, p. 166, cat. no. 322) Margaret Anne Thompson (1833-1865) was the daughter of a bank cashier named Joseph Thompson and the niece of the artist Kenny Meadows. She caught the eye of the Scottish writer John Hannay (1827-1873), who began to court her around the autumn of 1851. He called her "the sugarplum of the universe" and after a long engagement (due to lack of funds), they married on 24 February 1853 at the Scots Church on River Terrace in Islington close to where the Thompsons lived. Hannay was friend of several members of the Pre-Raphaelite circle including Rossetti who was particularly fond of Margaret, describing her as "one of the most beautiful and charming girls I ever met". He made this drawing on 8 December 1852, only eighteen months after he first met her. The strong light effects in the picture suggest that the portrait was made by lamplight on that December evening. Sadly Margaret died aged only thirty-two in 1865 after bearing six children for Hannay. Rossetti also painted Margaret as the dead wife of Dante in the watercolour Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice in 1856 (Tate) - a sad prediction of the fate that would befall her. (see Sotheby's and Christie's)