‘In an Artist's Studio’ by Christina Rossetti (1856): Analysis

 by Anya Shankar

One face looks out from all his canvases,

One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:

We found her hidden just behind those screens,

That mirror gave back all her loveliness.

A queen in opal or in ruby dress,

A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,

A saint, an angel — every canvas means

The same one meaning, neither more or less.

He feeds upon her face by day and night,

And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,

Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:

Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;

Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;

Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

Christina Rossetti is one of the most beloved poets of the Victorian era but her name isn't as widely heard as I think it ought to be (or as often as her male counterparts). She is most famously known for her long poem ‘Goblin Market’, which established Rossetti as a significant voice in Victorian poetry. A lot of her work features devotion, passion, nature, death and sexuality, in many forms such as sonnets, ballads and hymns. ‘In an Artist's Studio’ caught my eye mainly for the palpable feminist reading that is easily observed in the poem. 

Rossetti was in her mid-twenties when she wrote this classic sonnet about male art and the way it uses and depicts women. In summary, the poem sheds light on the male tendency to objectify his female models for his art; the woman is merely a passive object for the artist to project his desires onto. It is worth noting that, while the poem isn't about any artist in particular, Rossetti’s brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was a painter.

The artist’s model is made to dress up as all sorts of different women; ‘a queen’ and ‘a nameless girl’ even ‘a saint, an angel’, representing the way that women were only allowed to be everything but themselves in a world dictated by the patriarchy, and the way that women felt the need to play a part in order to conform to societal expectations of the nineteenth century. The artist, caught up in his own ideal, is unable to see his model as a real human being and he is presented as a sort of predator who ‘feeds upon her face’, reinforcing the lack of complex humanity given to the woman. However, the model remains composed, with ‘true kind eyes looks back on him’; the choice of ‘on’ instead of ‘at’ suggests that the woman has much more to say that she is holding back and also that she doesn't want to actively engage with the artist for fear of his predatory feeding. The fact that the model is compared to a mirror giving ‘back all her loveliness’, suggests that she is not conceived as a person in her own right but only a reflection of the man's wants and desires. Furthermore, she could be seen to have sacrificed her ‘loveliness’ for the sake of being the artist's model, reinforcing gender expectations at the time of the poem. 

Alternatively, one can sense a potential connection between the artist and the model, suggested through Rossetti’s use of the sonnet form, which are traditionally used for the medieval idea of courtly love which depicts unrequited love, one which is not reciprocated. Building on this idea, the model dresses up as many different women, in hope that the artist might love her as one of them, again sacrificing her own character but on her own accord. This can be seen the other way around, as the act of painting someone can be intimate and full of adoration and the painter can only project his dreams onto the canvas because he knows his dream of a reciprocated love won't come true. However, courtly love usually features silent women and is largely based on the male gaze, using the female as a mute object to project the male's feelings onto. So in this way, the sonnet is an apt form for Rossetti to use.

‘In an artist's studio’ can be interpreted in different ways, but the main message regarding gender roles and expectations of the Victorian era remains important and conceivable today.