Delia & I just got back from a last-minute 2-day mini-vacation to D.C. to catch the Pre-Raphaelite Exhibit that's visiting the National Gallery from the Tate in London.*  She wrote about it here at delicious length.

It was amazing getting to saturate eyes and brain in these works again. Pictures I know well from reproductions that were not my faves have now become once-in-a-lifetime revelations. It all also took me back to the absolute Romanticism (hotly denied at the time! of my teenage years - when Tolkien was new and a revelation, and the Pre-Raphs were another expression of that mythic passion.  It must be tough growing up in a world wi--well, not without that, but where you have to dig through the rubble to find it.

And then, there's Henry Wallis's "[The Death of] Chatterton."

Always a fave - but this time, I became fixed on the window above him - the distant cityscape, the crappy plaster & dirty old panes (so Riverside!), the beautifully-articulated rose in the pot . . . . I realized I Need That to be my new Facebook header image.

I am not good at this (pulling & editing & manipulating images off web).  Are you?

I will give you a Fine Reward, if you've got the time & inclination. >>>THANK YOU, CHRIS S.!! GOT IT. Arizona Rules.

(I could have posted this request on FB - but I trust you more.)


*I am eternally grateful to the Tate & the NG & all taxpayers everywhere who made this possible, as otherwise we were going to have to go to London in December between 2 other trips, or Delia would no longer be speaking to me.  We both suspect that she was right and they kept a bunch back before loading the plane for DC - I mean, where was the Mysterious Newly-discovered Burne-Jones?? - but if she was, don't tell us; it's too late now.

The exhibit is up through May 17th, but  this was the only time we could go before Passover and then Delia's incipient long-delayed bunion surgery.  As I Tweeted on the train home: For the camels, no water all all.

It will all be fine - but there will be rather a lot of it.