Six Dante Gabriel Rossetti Prints, Suspense & Night Recolours

Title

Six Dante Gabriel Rossetti Prints, Base Game Compatible "Suspense" & "SimCity at Night" Recolours


Description

These recolours are all in landscape format, but I had to resist the temptation to refer to them that way, so as not to cause confusion. For, to the best of my knowledge, Dante Gabriel Rossetti never did paint any landscapes, still lifes, or abstracts. In fact, as my hard drive now attests, virtually every one of his works features people, and these are most typically beautiful women - ornamented with an abundance of flowers, musical instruments and jewelry...

And on the topic of female subjects, the first picture uses the base game "SimCity at Night" painting, which costs §425, and has an environment value of 3, as follows:

"Jane Morris Lying on a Sofa" (1870), drawn in pencil, depicts Rossetti's most popular model, also an intimate friend and lover. The archive rossetti_jane_sofa.zip also contains a recolour of the picture frame in grey-scale. This frame is not directly linked to the Jane Morris picture and either recolour may be used independently.


The remaining five of these pictures are recolours of the base game "Suspense" painting, which costs §475, and has an environment value of 4. These are as follows:

"The First Anniversary of the Death of Beatrice" (1853-1854) concerns itself with Dante Alighieri, Rossetti's life long hero. Here Dante is being consoled by his friends a year after the death of Beatrice, the woman who represented his spiritual muse. Incidentally, this painting does not have that awful green hue when used in the game.



"Arthur's Tomb: The Last Meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere" (1854) is done in the blocky, two-dimensional style associated with the Pre-Raphaelites' homage to medieval art. A detail from this painting has been uploaded in Pets Badger format, here.

"Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice" (1876) recalls an episode in Dante Alighieri's autobiographical La Vita Nuova (The New Life), in which the poet dreams of the death of the Beloved. The painting shows the Angel of Love leading Dante to Beatrice, while the angel herself kisses Beatrice as she passes over. Significantly, this is Rossetti's largest work, and in the image of Beatrice he combines features of both his dead wife and lifelong muse Elizabeth Siddal, and the primary model of his later years, Jane Morris. Rossetti himself wrote a very beautiful translation of La Vita Nuova into English.


"How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival Were Fed with the Sanc Grael; But Sir Percival's Sister Died By the Way" (1864) is another of Rossetti's excursions into romantic medievalism, this one with a very cumbersome title, but a glorious red ethereal glow.



"The M's at Ems" (1869) - is a humorous sketch of his two friends, William and Jane Morris, attending a spa at Bad Ems in Prussia. Rossetti included this cartoon in a letter he wrote to Jane at the time. The drawing shows Jane indulging in the waters while her husband William's attention is absorbed by a book.


The primary distribution for these five works is rossetti_suspense.zip. I have also included rossetti_suspense_grey.zip which contains grey scale recolours of the Suspense series for those who may wish to use them in a Retroville type scenario, as shown here and here.

The images of these Rossetti works are all in the public domain. "Jane Morris Lying on a Sofa" is from Walker Art Gallery, "The M's at Ems" from The Athenaeum, and all rest were downloaded from the Art Renewal Center. The pictures were reduced in size from the originals without dimensional distortion, with a black mat added to fill out the aspect ratio where necessary. You may include these recolours in any uploaded lots, whether for free or pay - but it would be nice if you included a credit in the description and sent me a PM. I would prefer that you not upload the collection or components of it elsewhere, if only because such duplication wastes Internet resources and can cause confusion.

Additional Credits:

SimPE 6.0, the most essential of all!
Corel WEB.PhotoPaint, for grey-scale conversions and picture frame manipulation
Microsoft Photo Editor, for adjusting contrast, brightness and size
Recolouring Objects with Object Workshop (NEW tutorial) for its step-by-step helpfulness
Attribute Change 5.30 is very useful for adjusting a file's date and timestamp, used to put the recolours together in consecutive order, with the most recent recolour being the one furthest to the left. Thus the paintings are arranged in alphabetical order within the catalogue popup display from right to left.