EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY...and sometimes more than one

A Game of Chess on 7 October 1863

‘Extremely rare’ photograph of the Rossettis taken by Lewis Carroll up for auction

(Image: The Rossetti Family at Home, taken by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) in 1863. Photograph: Courtesy of Bonham)

Alison Flood

the Guardian |

The Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland author captured the famous siblings Christina and Dante Gabriel in 1863

"In October 1863, Charles Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, visited the Rossetti family at home in Chelsea, London, photographing the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti playing chess, and his sister Christina, the poet, looking on benignly. The “extremely rare” photograph, which was arranged and printed by Dodgson himself, is now to be auctioned by Bonhams later this week.

The image was taken in the garden of Dante Gabriel’s house on Cheyne Walk on 7 October 1863. Dodgson had been staying with the sculptor Alexander Munro in early October 1863, and Munro took him to meet the Rossetti family. The date was two years before the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would make Dodgson famous as Lewis Carroll, and a year after Dante Gabriel’s wife, the poet and artist’s model Elizabeth Siddall, had died after an overdose of laudanum. Dante Gabriel buried his poems with Siddall – but exhumed them in 1869.

Dodgson wrote in his diary that he “afterwards looked through a huge volume of drawings, some of which l am to photograph – a great treat, as I had never seen such exquisite drawing before”.

Later, Dodgson said he “dined with Mr Rossetti, and spent some of the evening there”, describing his visit as “a memorable day”.

He would come back the next day to photograph the whole family, as well as Dante Gabriel’s drawings – he helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood - and one of his models. . ."

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/14/extremely-rare-photograph-of-the-rossettis-taken-by-lewis-carroll-up-for-auction