A Sea-Spell  1877

A Sea-Spell was painted for Rossetti’s patron Frederick Leyland, a ship magnate who owned a large number of paintings by the artist. Rossetti first planned to illustrate lines from Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan — “A damsel with a dulcimer / In a vision once I saw” — but the subject was ultimately derived from his own poem, inscribed on the frame that he designed. The musicia...