Buy from us with a golden curl, for "The Goblin Market"
Dante Gabriel Rossetti British
Related author Christina Georgina Rossetti British
Not on view
In August 1861, Rossetti proposed to the publisher Alexander Macmillan that he create a "brotherly design for a frontispiece" to a volume of poems by his sister Christina. The drawing was finished by mid-December but it took until April 1862 Charles Faulkner's related wood engraving to be completed and published. The fairytale-like imagery echoes the related verse, which tells how goblins offer two sisters magic fruit, a food that symbolizes temptation. The artist shows the plainly dressed Lizzie walking uphill at upper right as Laura, in a patterned gown, kneels in the foreground and clips a lock of her luxurious hair to pay the animal-headed goblins crowded at left. The poem dramatically details how Laura's subsequent cravings bring her close to death, and how Lizzie's resistance enables her to confront the goblins and save her sister.
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