“When I saw the painting I knew instantly what it was. That copy is the reason Julian Treuherz, Victorian art expert and curator of the Manchester Art Gallery Madox Brown exhibit, even knew what the original looked like when he found it in a private collection two years ago. Rosseti’s unfinished copy was also in private hands for years, but it was tracked down in 1971 and sold at auction in 2006 for £106,850 ($173,000). Ford Madox Brown agreed to take him on as a pupil and assigned him The Seraph’s Watch as his first homework. In a letter to Madox Brown written in early 1848 (the same year Rosseti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood) Rosseti wrote glowingly about The Seraph’s Watch and other works asked if he could study under him. The painting made a big impression at the time on Dante Gabriel Rosseti, the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Now, 115 years later, it’s been found in a private collection and is going on display again at the Manchester Art Gallery for their Ford Madox Brown retrospective next month. The last time it was seen in public was at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society 1896 London exhibition, then it disappeared into the ether. It sold to a collector by the name of Cook or Cock. The painting depicts two cherubic, well, cherubs gazing lovingly at Christ’s crown of thorns and the rod used to scourged him. Ford Madox Brown first displayed The Seraph’s Watch at the British Institution for Promoting Fine Arts exhibition in 1847.
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