The picture had been in Japan for the last 29 years after it was previously sold in the same rooms in June 1988. Back then, it was knocked down at £105,000 to businessman Tomonori Iwakura and had changed hands once since then.
Here the 20½ x 17in (52 x 43cm) watercolour heightened with bodycolour appeared with a £400,000-600,000 estimate. After generating a decent competition, it sold to a UK private buyer at £560,000.
The picture which was dated 1867 and depicted Rossetti’s mistress Fanny Cornforth as Lady Lilith (the ‘first woman’ created from the same earth as Adam before the creation of Eve) was one of a number of versions of the subject painted by the artist. This example came in its original frame and with a hand-written poem by Rossetti attached to the backing-board.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s lover and muse Fanny Cornforth. She was admired for her hair and was one of the Pre-Raphaelite movements beauties, referred to as a ‘stunner’ by Rossetti.
Rossetti began the first version of Lady Lilith, which is now in the Delaware Art Museum, in 1864 as the first commission for Frederick Richards Leyland, who would become his greatest patron. Leyland disliked the way Rossetti had painted Lilith’s face and asked him re-paint it using the face of a professional model named Alexa Wilding.
Rossetti (1828-1882) had made two watercolour replicas of Lady Lilith before the repainting was undertaken, both of them in 1867, the year the oil was completed in its original form.
One of these, made for the collector William Coltart, now hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, while the other, made for Alexander Stevenson, was the version sold at the Sotheby’s sale on July 13.
