- Museum number
- 1939,0513.6
- Description
-
Rossetti lamenting the death of his Wombat, from an album of 60 caricature drawings; a tomb behind and overhanging tree. 1869
Pen and brown ink, with brown wash
- Production date
- 1869
- Dimensions
-
Height: 179 millimetres
-
Width: 113 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- See Curator's Comment and Provenance to 1939,0513.1.
The following entry is from the exhibition catalogue, PreRaphaelite Drawings in the British Museum, by John Gere (1994):
Rossetti was fascinated by exotic animals, and after moving to Chelsea in 1862 he installed a small menagerie in the garden of no. 16 Cheyne Walk. The wombat - "a burrowing marsupial native to S. Australia and Tasmania, characterised by a thick heavy body, short legs, and a general resemblance to a small bear" - was a particular favourite and the source of many legends, some probably apocryphal (see Michael Archer, 'Rossetti and the Wombat' in 'Apollo', lxxxi (1965), pp. 178 ff.). In Oxford in 1857 Rossetti and Burne Jones amused themselves by making drawings of wombats; in a letter of 25 July 1860 he arranged to meet Madox Brown "at the Zool. Gardens - place of meeting The Wombat's Lair"; in his sister Christina's poem Goblin Market, published in 1862, one of the goblins "like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry"; and in his illustration to the poem, entitled "Buy from us with a golden curl", the goblin in the foreground seems to be a wombat.
According to William Michael Rossetti (L & L, i, p. 253), "The beasts upon which Dante's affections were prodigalized were the first wombat and his successor the wood-chuck. The second wombat, having died immediately, accounts for little". The drawing evidently commemorates the short-lived second wombat, for on 11 September 1869, only two months before the date inscribed on the tomb, Rossetti had written to Mrs Morris: "What do you think? I have got a Wombat at Chelsea, come the other day" (Bryson and Troxell, letter 14). A drawing by William Bell Scott in the Tate Gallery, dated 8 February 1871 and inscribed on the verso "Rossetti's Wombat seated on his Lap", in fact represents the woodchuck.
The verse inscribed on the drawing is a parody of a passage in Thomas Moore's 'Lalla Rookh':
"I never nurs'd a dear gazelle
To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well
And love me, it was sure to die!"
The following entry appeared on the Explore section of the BM website until September 2015:
Rossetti loved exotic animals and began to collect them with a passion after the tragic death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal in 1862. He had moved to 16 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, a house with a large garden that soon became a miniature zoo. Much to the distress of his neighbours, the list of animals grew to include two wombats, owls, kangaroos, wallabies, a deer, armadillos, parakeets, peacocks, a racoon, a Canadian marmot or woodchuck, a Japanese salamander, two laughing jackasses and a zebu or small Brahminee bull. He even made enquiries about purchasing a young African elephant.
The wombats had a special place in Rossetti's heart. In a letter to his brother he described the arrival of the first one as ‘a Joy, a Triumph, a Delight, a Madness'. This drawing commemorates the short-lived second wombat. It is inscribed with a verse:
'I never reared a young wombat
To glad me with his pin-hole eye,
But when he was most sweet and fat
And tail-less he was sure to die'
The inscribed verse is a parody of Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh (1817): ‘I never nurs'd a dear gazelle / To glad me with its soft black eye, / But when it came to know me well / And love me, it was sure to die!' Instead of being layed to rest in the handsome tomb we see here, the unfortunate marsupial was actually stuffed and placed in Rossetti's entrance hall.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1994-95 Sept-Jan, BM, Pre-Raphaelite Drawings, no.29
- Acquisition date
- 1939
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1939,0513.6